StaticNAT

So tonight as I was getting into bed I did my normal scan twitter to see who I have pissed off or what might be going on that should rob me of sleep.  Well tonight @david_Strebel asked the following questions;

“Who thinks FCoE will win over iSCSI?”  and I responded “Not I” and then David asked the next logical question which was why not and here is what I had to say in the incredible detail that Twitter allows;  ”l2 boundaries, specialized hardware other than nics, hate relationship from most network people.”

The problem with this answer is pretty clear though.  It does not really answer the question just gives a few power point bullets to appease the crowd.  I don’t feel like this is enough though.  So I am going to attempt to lay out my overall view on this issue of who will win iSCSI or FCoE and why.  For those of you who don’t want to read the whole article which might get a a tad windy I don’t think either will win.  But I don’t think FCoE will emerge as the leader until something better come along.  For those masochists who like this kind of crap read on.

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So here I am at 2:15 AM.  Storming outside and me all hopped up on caffeine.  I just took a break from righting my last post:

Welcome to the HP Dream world where reality does not apply.

During that little breather I though you know what people must think I am a Cisco Zealot.  Well that could not be further from the truth.  I am a self confessed Technology Zealot.  It it is new, shiny, blinks, chirps or at some point in its lifecycle lived in a Data Center I want it.  But alas at least at this point in my life I have to make money.  I do that by working for a Cisco VAR.  We sell 90% plus Cisco.  Unlike past jobs I do not rep Juniper, HP, F5, Foundry…oops I mean Brocade, Arista, 3com, Shoretel, Avaya or anyone else that directly competes with Cisco Networking, Compute or Unified Communications.

That being said I do not think Cisco has the best product in every segment.  But I wont flesh that out on my blog.  If you want that info there is a price.  You are either a customer with a requirement I can’t meet at which point I will be honest with you or you are a professional friend who I feel comfortable discussion the finer and rougher points of our industry with.  What I will say though is I have some Rules for what I will sell and I wont sell.  I am going to lay those out to you and in a few cases why I feel how I feel.  I hope this will provide insight to others who design, sell and deploy solutions in our industry for clients.  At the end of the day our integrity is all we really have, Vendors crash, employers go under and clients come and go.

1.  If I wont run it in my basement I wont install it at a client!

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So last night while working on a Scalable Compute and storage design for a client, this post popped up in my twitter stream from @ErinatHP;

“New HP blog post “In the light of day – the Cisco UCS hype doesn’t match the promise” ; UCS not all its marketed to be http://bit.ly/dKj88W”

So in my normal do not let a stupid dig by a lame duck player go unmatched I responded “Oh I can’t wait to read this FUD” (you can check me out on twitter @joshobrien77)

All the twitter marketing and pissing matches aside I meant what I said and I did look forward to reading the HP Spin on where their market is vanishing to.  And here are my responses, while they might not be the most technical they are not un-informed from the basis of the Cisco UCS platform or the HP C7000 with FLEX-10 Platform.  And remember at the end of the day I represent me not Cisco not my employer, just little old me.

Also just so if this gets nasty I want to make sure that I am crediting this correctly:

All of the HP Writes: Are direct Quotes from Duncan Campbel with HP on his blog which you can find here:  http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Converged-Infrastructure/In-the-light-of-day-the-Cisco-UCS-hype-doesn-t-match-the-promise/ba-p/83537

PLEASE READ ALL of Duncan’s Post BEFORE you READ Mine.  I DO NOT PRETEND to REPRESENT HIS SIDE WELL AT ALL!

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It is funny how things cycle. We have been doing a bunch of Cisco 4500 installs ranging from 4506′s through the 4510 and even a few 6500s in the mix. And no matter how hard we try we have power issues with them every single time. We either are in a hurry and spec the wrong cables, the client requests the wrong cable, we don’t have the correct power to stage the equipment in our office or the client doesn’t have the right power for the unit. In many cases we temporarily fall back to using 110 power with NEMA 5-15/20T cables and then force the power supplies to combined mode in order to get enough power to bring up the entire chassis.  I should point out that this is usually only good for temp fix and that you should fix your power issue (usually installing bigger circuits) and move back to redundant mode.  But for that quick fix here is the command on a 4500 or 6500 chassis to combine the power supplies:

power redundancy-mode combined

This command should be ran from config mode and once your config is saved it will return to this state after reboot.

And for a bit of extra fun scream out BY THE POWER OF GREYSKULL as you type this in.

Well the picture to the right shows exactly where they are.  In the past we have dealt with 1Gbps interfaces on supervisors that had both RJ-45 and SFP slots and it was an either/or decision if you wanted to use them.  In those cases you had a config entry that required you to state SFP or RJ-45 in the interface configuration.  No matter what you chose it was always shown Interface GigabitEthernet Mod#/Port#.  So when I dove  into the Sup720 I was configuring I decided it was supposed to be the same way because why would Cisco ever let me use all the ports on the front of my hardware?  Being the all knowing geek that I am I also ignored the config file that I have seen at least 30 times in the last hour and I just started typing Interface TenGigabitEthernet 5/1, and I kept getting this; Read the rest of this entry »