It’s been a month since I’ve been at my new employer. What’s different is that I’m more focused on a smaller set of technologies. On one side, I’m less exposed to the cutting edge. But now I can really focus on just a few technologies and become a subject matter expert.

That leads to me to say that you will be reading more about Microsoft technologies. It will be leaning on Active Directory, Exchange and SharePoint. Those are currently my primary areas of focus. I think they’re great topics and have lots of room for growth.

Networking will still be a large part of what I do since its what transfers the 1s and 0s. And it’s quite possible that I may be on a networking project.

My environment is definitely different. I’m going from a non-profit to a private equity firm. Huge change. I’m enjoying it. The people are great and fun to be around.

The current projects I’m looking at will help increase the productivity and reliability for the whole firm. It’s an exciting time to be in IT for the firm.

Friday the 13th was my last day at my non-profit employer. I had been there for a good five years. A good run for sure. I learned so much there. I did everything from configuring laptops, troubleshooting said laptops, configuring email on iPhones, Blackberries, Androids and tablets, provisioning servers, deploying VMs, dealing with alarms.. you name it.

It was definitely a jack of all trades kind of thing. But then came a moment when I felt that I needed something different. A change.

Starting today I will be working at a private equity firm as a Sr. IT Support Specialist. I’ll be supporting a growing infrastructure. Similar to my previous job responsibilities.

In a way I’m happy to move back to a for-profit. There are many pros and cons to both for-profit and non-profit. Probably better fit for another blog post.

All I can say is that I’m looking forward to this new chapter.

One thing to consider for 2012 is that I will be using and learning more VMware. I’ve always had a strong interest in virtualization, especially with VMware’s technologies. Back in 2010 I took the VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage class. I was impressed with their lab setup. Everything worked flawlessly. Even with recent moves to the virtualized desktop and BYOC. It’s amazing what you can do now with virtualization.

I’ve already began refreshing my knowledge by reading through Scott Lowe’s Mastering VMware vSphere 4. It’s full of useful information and I’m soaking in a lot. I’m planning out my lab, which will run on my Macbook Pro, using VMware Fusion. I still have my lab books from my VMware class so I will utilize those. Then I need to brush up on the new material for 4.1.

I’m actually aiming high and looking to sit in on the VCP 4 exam this month. You’ll see more VMware posts in the upcoming days.

Near the end of 2010 I set out some goals for myself to complete in 2011. Did I complete them? Hell no. But I’m not necessarily bummed out about it. In your professional career, you go where your career takes you. Sometimes it takes a different path. My career is still along the IT path but it has somewhat shifted a bit.

My major goal for 2011 was to get my CCNP RS. I attempted my CCNP ROUTE but failed on my first attempt. No problem. I’m still studying for it now and will probably sit on the exam before March 2012. It’s still on my list of goals!

When I look back at 2011 I see it as a maintaining year for our network. Not too many implementations. Lots of troubleshooting and optimization. I did work on lots of planning and project management. Learned quite a bit there but nothing of a large scale.

I’ve had growing interest in more implementations for new systems and have been training myself in that area.

2012 will be an interesting year for me and I’m not going to create any major goals this year. What I want to do is see how my career plays out for a while. Let’s just say I’ll create some small goals

2011 was my year for social media. I increased my communications with the interwebz this year compared to 2010. So in order here are the websites I visited the most.

1. Google

In particular it’s Gmail, Google Reader and Google+. The first two I happen to use quite a lot. Gmail is my main email communication and Google Reader houses all the news I want to follow. Recent changes to Gmail weren’t looking great in my eyes but I think Google will get this right sooner or later. Their improvements to Google Reader were great and went more in line with their new social media platform.

That brings me to Google+. For me, had lots of potential. But now I’m reconsidering my engagement there because lack thereof. Everyone seems to want to communicate in 140 characters or less.

2. Facebook

Social media with my friends. Need I say more? If you’re not a close friend to me then I probably communicate with you on Twitter.

3. Serverfault

Great resource and community of techies. The guys at Serverfault (or Stackexchange) have a system nailed perfectly. It’s a Q&A site for those needing help with anything technical related. They also have subsites of other topics.

4. Hootsuite

I use this service to communicate on my social networks, such as Twitter. They give me the ability to schedule out Tweets, organize tweets and access more than one social media account. It’s a great resource for anyone.

5. Cisco

Projects at work kept me busy on Cisco’s website. I’ve read quite a few configuration guides and also visited their support forums. I think their site needs a lot more work to make things more efficient such as their search.

6. Reddit

The ultimate time waster. Reddit has many sub-sites (called sub-reddits) where you can absolutely kill time and have a good laugh.

What web services have you visited the most?

Do you have ritual before, during and after your certification exams? I was watching ESPN and thought to myself,

What if we treated an examination like a sports game?

So let’s say I finish my exam and hit “Grade” stand up from my chair, step aside and do the Tebow

]]> http://www.rowelldionicio.com/2011/12/whats-your-ritual/feed/ 0 http://www.rowelldionicio.com/2011/12/understanding-ace-concepts-part-i/ http://www.rowelldionicio.com/2011/12/understanding-ace-concepts-part-i/#comments Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:00:44 +0000 rowelld http://www.rowellism.com/?p=741

Just to warn you, these concepts are from my own knowledge and how I came to understand how the ACE understands load balancing. Please refer to the full documentation on Cisco’s website.

To fully understand how the ACE works there are core areas to be familiar with:

• Virtualization
• Server load balancing
• Security

The ACE works in terms of virtualization. Within virtualization you have different areas:

• Contexts
• Domains
• Role-based access control
• Resource Classes

Contexts

A context is an actual virtualized environment in the ACE. You can configure multiple contexts which are all divided and act as a single ACE appliance. Within each context you can apply policies, servers, serverfarms, interfaces and even different administration rules.

Domains

Within each context you can create multiple domains. Domains allow you to control user access to objects in a context. A user is an account you create to allow administration to resources defined within the domain which is associated to a context.

Role-based Access Control

Otherwise known as RBAC. A set of permissions assigned to users which gives them predefined roles for access.

Resource Classes

You create resource classes and associate contexts to a resource class to manage access to ACE resources. This is useful for controlling how much resources can be used per context so that one context does not utilize all resources on the ACE. When all resources are exhausted you will have performance issues.

Diving In

Define a resource class. When configuring an ACE you will start off in the Admin context. From there you will create a Resource Class for the virtual context(s) you will create to load balance your website.

Create a context. After a Resource Class is created and configured you create a Context and associate it with a Resource Class. This context will serve as the virtual ACE which will manage traffic to the site you want load balanced.

By default, traffic to the newly created context is denied so you will have to create an access list to allow traffic. (Later described)

To begin configuring load balancing you will have to define an rserver. An rserver is a “Real Server”. This maps back to your web server. rservers host the same content which is why we’re load balancing, right?

Those rservers will be associated with a serverfarm. A server farm is a group of networked real servers (rservers).

So in summary and for simplicity, you would configure the ACE in this manner:

1. Resource Class
2. Context
3. Access-lists
4. Real Servers
5. Server Farm

That’s just a quick rundown on configuring an ACE. Also, when configuring Contexts, you must specify how traffic will exit so a default route will need to be configured.

I’ve been having one hell of a time with a Cisco AP in one of our remote offices. Randomly, it will just fall off the face of the Earth and lose connection with our Controller at HQ. It started off as one of those mysterious issues where the cliche “reboot” would do the trick. While this may be okay for the first time it gets quite annoying if you have to do it multiple times thereafter.

Even TAC had a shot at it and while I can’t remember what they did the end result was still the same. I connected to the AP using a console cable to see if there were any log messages displaying. Yes there were!

Here’s what caught my eye:

AP resolving cisco-lwapp-controller to 10.39.39.19

Not okay with me because our controller is not located at 10.39.39.19. I know I specifically created a DNS entry for cisco-lwapp-controller and it was there. But why on Earth would it resolve to 10.39.39.19? I found that it was resolving the controller to cisco-lwapp-controller.cisco.com.

What I decided to do is manually set the configuration for the AP since it wasn’t getting the correct settings. I started by removing the ip helper-address on vlan with the AP. Then on the controller I performed the commands:

configured static ip addr to RemoteAP
config ap static-ip add domain RemoteAP localdomain.com
config ap static-ip add nameserver RemoteAP 5.10.50.10

Then verify settings on controller:

show ap config general ap-name

The result was now the AP was resolving the correct entry, instead of cisco-lwapp-controller.cisco.com, is now cisco-lwapp-controller.domain.com. Now that I resolved the connection to the Controller I have began seeing the AP drop randomly again. I looked to the Controller to give me some more information.

(Cisco Controller) >show ap join stats summary xxxx.xxxx.xxxx

Is the AP currently connected to controller................ No
Time at which the AP joined this controller last time...... Not applicable
Type of error that occurred last........................... AP got or has been disconnected
Reason for error that occurred last........................ Timed out while waiting for ECHO repsonse from the AP
Time at which the last join eror occurred.................. Oct 18 15:14:58.063

(Cisco Controller) >show ap join stats detailed xxxx.xxxx.xxxx

Discovery phase statistics
- Discovery requests received.............................. 10
- Successful discovery responses sent...................... 10
- Unsuccessful discovery request processing................ 0
- Reason for last unsuccessful discovery attempt........... Not applicable
- Time at last successful discovery attempt................ Oct 18 14:47:49.500
- Time at last unsuccessful discovery attempt.............. Not applicable

Join phase statistics
- Join requests received................................... 5
- Successful join responses sent........................... 5
- Unsuccessful join request processing..................... 0
- Reason for last unsuccessful join attempt................ Not applicable
- Time at last successful join attempt..................... Oct 18 14:48:00.063
- Time at last unsuccessful join attempt................... Not applicable

Configuration phase statistics
- Configuration requests received.......................... 0
- Successful configuration responses sent.................. 0
- Unsuccessful configuration request processing............ 0
- Reason for last unsuccessful configuration attempt....... Not applicable
--More-- or (q)uit
- Time at last successful configuration attempt............ Not applicable
- Time at last unsuccessful configuration attempt.......... Not applicable

Last AP message decrytion failure details
- Reason for last message decryption failure............... Not applicable

Last AP disconnect details
- Reason for last AP connection failure.................... Timed out while waiting for ECHO repsonse from the AP

Last join error summary
- Type of error that occurred last......................... AP got or has been disconnected
- Reason for error that occurred last...................... Timed out while waiting for ECHO repsonse from the AP
- Time at which the last join error occurred............... Oct 18 15:14:58.063

(Cisco Controller) show>sysinfo

Manufacturer's Name.............................. Cisco Systems Inc.
Product Name..................................... Cisco Controller
Product Version.................................. 5.1.163.0
RTOS Version..................................... 5.1.163.0
Bootloader Version............................... 4.0.191.0
Build Type....................................... DATA + WPS

System Name...................................... Controller
System Location..................................
System Contact...................................
System ObjectID.................................. 1.3.6.1.4.1.9.1.828
IP Address....................................... 10.10.70.12
System Up Time................................... 52 days 9 hrs 44 mins 10 secs
System Timezone Location......................... (GMT -8:00) Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Current Boot License Level.......................
Next Boot License Level..........................

Configured Country............................... US  - United States
Operating Environment............................ Commercial (0 to 40 C)
Internal Temp Alarm Limits....................... 0 to 65 C
Internal Temperature............................. +38 C
                                                       --More-- or (q)uit

State of 802.11b Network......................... Enabled
State of 802.11a Network......................... Enabled
Number of WLANs.................................. 13
3rd Party Access Point Support................... Disabled
Number of Active Clients......................... 69

Burned-in MAC Address............................ 88:43:E1:8C:F1:E0

According to the Controller, it was waiting for an Echo response from the AP. Turns out that the latency between the Controller and AP was too high for the Controller to handle so the connection drops. What I’m tasked with now is trying to find out why this connection is going crazy.

Resources used:
http://revolutionwifi.blogspot.com/2010/11/capwap-controller-discovery-process_23.html
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/wireless/ps430/products_tech_note09186a00808e2d27.shtml|
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk722/tk809/technologies_tech_note09186a0080962aac.shtml

I’m back to studying for my CCNP R&S. I’m going back with a new mindset. I want to read to understand and do a lot of labs that will help make me understand the concepts.

What is the basic EIGRP configuration command?

router eigrp asn
network net-id wildcard-mask

What is the concept of the router EIGRP configuration commands?

For routers to become neighbors they must be configured with the same ASN number. Enabled interfaces are matched by the network command. Those interfaces enabled will attempt to discover neighbors on that interface by sending EIGRP multicast hello messages. Advertisements are also made to neighbors on the enabled interface about the connected subnet.

If no wildcard mask is configured with the network command then it will use the classful network number. The wildcard mask acts like an ACL by applying a logic comparing the network id with each interface’s IP address.

What are some key EIGRP verification commands?

• show ip eigrp interfaces
• show ip protocols
• show ip eigrp neighbors
• show ip eigrp topology
• show ip route

What command is used to verify EIGRP enabled interfaces?

• show ip eigrp interfaces
• show ip protocols

What steps does EIGRP follow to add routes to the IP routing table?

1. Neighbor discovery via Hello messages

2. Topology exchange – Full updates then partial updates

3. Choosing routes – lowest-metric routes

How does EIGRP exchange topology information?

1. EIGRP router sends neighbor discovery Hello message

2. Router sends full routing update

3. Router’s continue to send Hello messages

4. Changes are sent using Partial Updates

How are update messages sent?

To multicast IP 224.0.0.10 using Reliable Transport Protocol (RTP)

How does EIGRP calculate the best routes?

Uses bandwidth and delay settings

What are the three steps EIGRP uses to learn the best loop-free routes?

1. Establish EIGRP neighbor relationships

2. Exchange EIGRP topology data

3. Calculate the currently best IP route for each subnet

How do you improve convergence for EIGRP?

Tuning Hello and Hold time intervals.

What is the Hello message used for?

To confirm that the link between neighbors still works. If router doesn’t receive Hello from a neighbor for one entire Hold time, the router considers the neighbor as failed.

What is the default LAN Hello and Hold interval?

5 and 15, respectively.

Where do you configure the Hello and Hold Timer intervals?

Per interface or sub interface using:

ip hello-interval eigrp asn interval
ip hold-time eigrp  asn interval

How do you verify Hello/Hold Timers?

show ip eigrp interface type number detail !!doesn't display Hold Timer on interface

What is the result of a passive interface?

EIGRP doesn’t send any EIGRP messages on an interface that is passive. The router ignores any EIGRP messages, including multicasts or EIGRP unicasts received on the interface. EIGRP still advertises about the connected subnets if matched with an EIGRP network command.

How do you verify passive interfaces?

show ip protocols

What is the result of EIGRP authentication?

EIGRP routers authenticate every EIGRP message using the same pre shared key (PSK), generating an MD5 digest for each message based on the PSK.

What are the steps to enabling EIGRP authentication?

1. Create an authentication key chain

2. Create one or more key numbers

3. Define the authentication key’s value (key string)

4. Enable EIGRP MD5 authentication on an interface

5. Refer to correct key chain to be used on an interface

What is the Key Chain time-based logic?

Sending EIGRP messages will use the lowest key number among all currently valid keys.

Receiving EIGRP message use all currently valid keys

How do you verify that authentication is working?

Neighbors will be up which can be verified using the show ip eigrp neighbors command. Other commands that are helpful:

• show key chain
• debug eigrp packet

What should you keep in mind when troubleshooting EIGRP authentication?

• Examine the configuration and the current time on routers.
• Key chain name and key number on routers don’t have to match.
• Key string on neighbors must match.
• Check which keys are currently valid.
• Both ip authentication mode eigrp asn md5 and ip authentication key-chain eigrp asn name-of-chain must be configured.

How do you reduce the overhead associated with EIGRP multicast messages?

By configuring static neighbors

How do you configure static neighbors?

neighbor ip-address outgoing-interface

EIGRP router subcommand

How do you verify a static neighbor?

show ip eigrp neighbors detail

What are the requirements for EIGRP neighborship?

• Routers must be able to send/receive ip packets to one another
• Interfaces’ primary IP addresses must be in the same subnet
• Must not be passive on the connected interface
• Must use the same ASN
• Must pass authentication
• K-values must match

What order does EIGRP use to determine its RID?

1. Use configured value

2. Use highest IPv4 on up/up loopback

3. Use highest IPv4 on up/up non-loopback

I’m back on the certification train. I had studied for the CCNP ROUTE a while back and attempted the written test in August 2011. Unfortunately, I failed that exam.

I have taken a break from certification study to learn about other technologies such as Exchange 2010, Microsoft Virtualization and Active Directory.

This time around I’ve written down my plan to pass ROUTE. I listened in on Ed Tittel’s webinar on creating a study plan for certifications so I wrote down my personal and career goals. Writing down both goals gave me a good overview of what I need to do to acquire more knowledge and obtain a certification while living my personal life.

I’ll go over my specific plan which I drew on my moleskin:

1. Print out the blueprint – be sure to master each line in the blueprint
2. Read OCG – my study plan for ROUTE is to read through the Official Certification Guide. I feel that I would learn a lot more because of the amount of information and depth.
3. To create a timeline, I wanted to dedicate a chapter each week with 1.5 hours of uninterrupted reading time.
4. Before getting into the book I will use the Boson practice exam to see where I’m at with my knowledge.
5. With the practice exam results I will start focusing on my weak areas first.
6. While reading, I will write down notes and mark the book for important topics to remember.
7. I must remember to not rush through this process and really take in the material.
8. An important part of my studying is doing a lot of labbing with GNS3 and physical hardware. For labs, I will be using the Cisco ROUTE Lab Manual.
9. After each chapter I will answer the chapter quizes. If I don’t score over 90% then I must go back and review the material, retake the chapter quiz and score over 90% before moving forward.
10. I’ll go back and look at the blueprint to make sure I master each item.
11. As I go through each chapter I will publish my notes here on this blog.
12. After finishing the whole book and labs I will do the Boson practice exam again to see if my score as improved. If I don’t score over 90% I will go back to my weak areas and do more studying until I score over 90%.
13. After I am happy with my practice test results I will take the real exam

There you have it! That’s my plan. I’ll probably revise it along the way to fit my needs but that’s what I’ll be working off of for the next few months.

What is your study plan?