Helpful SysAdmin

More of my SysAdmin articles online from Simple Talk

I did some work with Red Gate a while back, and some of that content is now being released online. Hopefully you’ll find it useful and informative.

What we have is:

• Networking: The Crib Sheet

When I wrote these pieces, I intended them to be tied together, and I didn’t expect everyone to have the underlying knowledge necessary to administer a network. Such a big part of understanding why our networks are laid out and configured they way that they are is understanding how TCP/IP operates. I wrote this piece to try to introduce the information necessary to really grok the rest of the work.

• Physical Layout for the Reluctant

Wrangling the configuration on switches and routers is only half the battle. We small infrastructure admins often find ourselves doing a lot of the physical work, too, and I don’t ever see any documentation for it. Which sucks. So I wrote this to help.

• Logical Network Layout for Small Networks

The documentation that I DO see is almost always about either large infrastructures or small home networks. Never anything devoted to the size that I admin. So I wrote this piece about building and managing small and medium business networks.

As I said, I hope you enjoy them. If so, please vote on them at Simple Talk, and let me know if you have any corrections or additions.

Hey! You got Cisco FEX in my HP Bladecenter!

Like ever so much chocolate and peanut butter, Cisco has let us at Networking Field day that they’ve worked with HP to allow their Nexus B22 Fiber Exchange (FEX) modules to be installed directly into the HP Blade Centers.

I’m not a big networking guy, but this is really cool, and here’s why.

The FEX is a piece of hardware designed specifically to extend I/O directly to the server and even into VM guests. It “…behaves like a remote line card to a parent Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch”. This was and has been only possible if you used the Cisco Unified Computing System, their own blade server solution offering. Until now.

Now, if you’ve got an HP C-class Blade Enclosure and you’re using a Nexus switch upstream, you can get one of these B22 modules, install it, and your HP machines can take advantage of the features.

If you want to read more, check out the Cisco Nexus B22HP Design & Deployment Guide.

Cool stuff. It’s great to see big companies like this working together. Everyone benefits, and it encourages more cooperation.

Incidentally, if you want to watch more Networking Field Day, there’s a live video feed.

Disclosure:
This post mentions a company which paid my employer to partake in an event. I was not paid to write this post, nor was it requested of me. This company has provided me nothing of value besides things which would be considered normal conference swag, such as memory sticks, bags, or pamphlets of information. I write this entry of my own volition and stand by the contents. As always, if I say something is good, it is because I think it is good, not because someone asked me to say it is good.