Christmas Time Again

Basically, its Christmas time again. I like this time of year. I especially like the smells, by that I mean the smell of cold air, burning wood, and the warm apple, cinnamon smell. I love that smell. Now that I am a full time worker the best part of this year is the Vacation. I get some sweet days off. Also, all changes come to a hault which is really nice. All in all I am pretty happy with how things are going.

Cisco 6500 VSS 1440...Makes One BIG Switch a bigger switch

As I went through my Google Reader the other day, I was quite pleasantly surprised to see that I had gotten a few new hits on my Cisco tag section. Looking into this further turns out Cisco had a product announcement.

Low and behold what I had been waiting for was there. Cisco finally announces the VSS 1440 for the Cisco 6500. Ok some people are like what the @#%%^. What this means is you can now "stack" two 6500 chasis.

If you are familar with the WS-C3750 switch you will know what this technology is right off the bat. If you don't I will try to explain.

Basically, stacking technology is a way to join multiple standalone switches into one logical switch with one IP address and one routing instance. Lets say you log into a 6 switch 3750 stack. If you did a show run you would see one main configuration with the typical stuff but when you got down to the interface section you would see once you got past the first 48 ports you would then see Gi2/0/1 and so forth.

This gives you one place to configure all the ports instead of individually logging into each switch. This also give you the ability to link all the switches together without having to "daisy chain". Eliminating problems in that area. As well it gives you the ability to get better redundancy as well as (if I am not mistaken) an 2 x 4G Etherchannel.

Etherchanneling is taking several ports in this case 2 x four ports over one logical switch (6 physical switches) and bundling them together for a bigger pipe. This helps in reducing spanning tree traffic.

A typical configuration of a Ehterchannel would look similar to this:

int Gi1/0/49
!This creates int port-channel 1
! The int port-channel is where you configure your etherchanneled ports
channel-group 1 mode on

int Gi1/0/51
channel-group 1 mode on

int Gi6/0/49
channel-group 1 mode on

int gi 6/0/51
channel-group 1 mode on

! Then configure your int port-channel
! After configuring this it will pass the config down to the etherchanneled ports

int po 1
switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
switchport mode trunk
switchport trunk allowed vlan 10,11,12,13,14,15
switchport trunk native vlan 888

Make sure you do a no shut on the int po 1 after you configure it so that the configuration gets put on the ehterchanneled ports.

On the otherside of the Etherchannel you need to do the same thing on the other switch combine in an Ehterchannel it does not matter what the number you is just make sure it is not in use.

OK, if you get down here I am sorry I went on a rant there but a background would at least help out. The VSS 1440 would allow you to combing two 6500 chasis. This gives you 18 blades at your disposal (in a 6509).

You can then have one IP and one routing instance as well now you have essentially removed spanning-tree between these switches and now you can have 2 X 4G Etherchannels combing into one 8 G Etherchannel.

Etherchannels must go to the same switch, because essentially it is just a big cable. So if you logically have one switch....you can put all your ports hooked to either physical switch and combine all of them. Super through put.

Some other things when I was talking to my boss about this was that you could also use this with the IBM BladeCenter switches once they move to the 3750 chipset. Right now hte IBM BladeCenter Cisco Switch modules are physically two switches but if the stacking technology gets implemented there one logical switch and again some serious throughput in combination with the VSS 1440 on the 6500.

Thank you Cisco, thank you.

Martian Child

I don't know if I mentioned seeing Martian Child. Go check this movie out its smart funny and very deep all at the same time.

Two movies that are just really good and makes perfect since.

• Dan in Real Life
• Martian Child
  

Martian Child stars John Cusak, Joan Cusak. Check it out I think you will be surprised.

A Distro Whore

Yes, I am a distro whore. Now before you stop reading let me explain what means. A distro whore by definition is someone who gets several Linux distributions and continually switches them in and out for one another.

Well, that is me. Over the past few years I have tried several distributions. Currently at my house I am running:

Ubuntu 7.10, CentOS5.0, FreeSpire 2.0, Debian 4.0, openSuSe 10.3, FreeNas, IPCop

Downloading and fixing to install or try out:

DreamLinux, Fedora 7.92, DesktopBSD 1.6RC3, PCBSD1.4, Fluxbuntu 7.10, FreeBSD 7.0, Gentoo 2007.0, OpenBSD 1.4, SabayonLinux-3.4e

I think that is the making of a distro whore.

My new slogan in life is: Linux its an addiction

Dan in Real Life

Dan in Real Life...

Pros:
Steve Carrell
Funny

Cons:
I don't see anything really wrong with the movie

I know that I am the worst movie critic ever...I hardly ever post about movies. I just had to say that Dan in Real life is a good movie. If you have a wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever, take them to see this movie.

When we went to the movies both my wife and I were mad at each other when we left we were holding hands and skipping.

I must see movie.

Merge the TWO

I have decided that I will be merging back together the Tech in with the Personal. Don't laugh it was a tough decision. Anyway get ready for some tech stuff on the my personal blog!

Way Behind

I read on of my friends posts about the stages of a web developer. It was a good look into different mind sets, I am not really sure what mindset I am in right now but I can tell you in everything right now I am behind schedule.

Anyway, new things happening:

Got a Kitten (named Apache "1.3" Brown)
Working more
Trying to work less

Yeah, that is how exciting my life is at the moment. I have got to get back on the horse with the blogging stuff!!!

Also, I am thinking of bringing the tech back into the personal just because that is me....Any thoughts?