Fryguy

The Ultimate Cisco Live Attendee(s)

In Cisco Live on August 15, 2011 at 22:42

So who is the Ultimate Cisco Live Attendee? That is simple – not me nor my good friend, Tom - but Carole Warner Reece – as has been announced on the Newsroom site at Cisco (LINK)

Denise, John, and Carole (da winner!)

To be honest, I have to agree with them on this one as Carole has been attending for over 10 years now, had had her CCIE for over 10 years, and works for a company that only continues to help the event with their quality employees. I want to congratulate here and say WELL DESERVED! She is more of a die hard fan then I am, heck she even wore a Star Trek shirt to the closing keynote with William Shatner, she has earned her title!

It looks like Tom and I made a nice showing and got some great press from Cisco for our submissions. Me for my blog posts, and Tom for his uber nerdy video taken with his Cisco CIUS tablet. You can see his blog post on his feeling here.

Oh, if you just want to see the video – here you go!

cisco live, CL11, CL12, Recap

Cisco Live 2011 – Recap

In Cisco Live on July 17, 2011 at 20:22

Ahhh… It’s Sunday – just a few days after Cisco Live 2011 has come to a close and I am still recovering! Why am I still recovering one might ask? Well, my liver needs time to recuperate, the 3 hour time difference is a killer, leaving at 7 AM and getting home at 6PM is tough, and just all the information and knowledge gained last week is still soaking in! I will admit – it was an AWESOME experience this year!

So I see I owe you a recap for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I will start with Tuesday first..

Tuesday

Well my first class on Tuesday was BRKRST-3045 – LISP and to my surprise this was a LARGE class! I would guess that there was close to 1000 people in attendance for this one, blew me away! LISP is a cool protocol that I blogged about some time ago here – LISP – Say What?. They covered the protocol and the components of it in detail, the operation of LISP as well as some Use Cases. It was a great class and has generated a few new blog post ideas – so the future looks bright for this one!

After that class it was a quick break over to Tom’s Corner ( NetworkingNerd ) that was basically a table outside of the registration and World of Solutions entrance. It turned out to be a great meeting place for all the Twitter people out there, and we had a crowd! We usually met there before going to a class, session, WoS, or anywhere else – nice common place that was easy to get to.

Quick update…

In Cisco Live on July 15, 2011 at 01:14

Just a quick update… I will try and update the blog this weekend as time allows, if not this weekend then definitely on Monday. Been a long and tiring week – and best of all an awesome one! Have quite a bit to share about the experiences over the day as well as many new post ideas.

Was great to meet many of you – really appreciated (as well as humbled) by all the compliments and kind words.

Hope you all have a safe trip home and hope to see you again next year!

Thank you,

Jeff (Fryguy)

PS – I will fix the IOS 15 post as soon as possible, I am hearing it is kicking back errors – and I think that is due to the sheer size of the matrix. See what I can do.

Cisco Live 2011 – Monday

In Cisco Live on July 12, 2011 at 09:52

Well, Monday is in the books now – and it was a great start to the conference.

The day started with breakfast with Ron Fuller – @CCIE58581 on Twitter and he is also one of the authors on the NX-OS and Cisco Nexus Switching. It was really great to put a face and voice to the name as he and I have chatted over the past year and such, but never had that change to meet – until now.

After breakfast with Ron, I headed over to the Pearson Vue testing center to take the free test that I signed up for. Not sure what I was thinking when I scheduled the test for 8 AM on a Monday, but I am glad I did. I can now say that I am a CCDE candidate – I am now allowed to take the CCDE lab – if I can get a seat. It was a good test, some things took more thought then I expected, but it is a fair test. If you are wondering what I used to study, there are many books listed on the CCDE Cisco site, the list there is good.

My first class of the day was BRKARC-3470 Cisco Nexus 7000 Switch Architecture given by Tim Stevenson. This class was a great overview of how the Cisco 7010/7018 chassis interworkings work. From port-level asic connectivity, to backplane connectivity, and even the differences with the M and F cards. It was a great overview of the hardware.

Lunch on Monday was hectic – there are about 14,000 attendees here (last count I heard), so you can image the logistics of getting that many people fed and seated. The food was good but the seating was a bit tough. It is sometimes like that on the first day though, it is the day that any issues are quickly exposed and fixed.

cisco live, nexus 7000, shirt, star trek

Cisco Live Attire

In Cisco Live, shirt, Why not? on July 11, 2011 at 11:59

A few weeks ago a few of us on Twitter where having some fun with technology and talking about the closing keynote speaker, William Shatner, and his history and his fame with Star Trek. What came out of all of that tweeting was a shirt design that reflected memorable Star Trek terms with the Nexus 7000. Since it was proving difficult to get the shirt printed through on-line means, I decided to make one myself – and add in a few other geeky items.

So, without further ado, here is the shirt and all the fun stuff that is on it!

Front of shirt playing off the movie phrase “Scotty, we need more power” by Capt. Kirk

And then on the back we have

data center, fabric path, fex, nexus, vPC

Cisco Live 2011 – Sunday – Next Gen Data Center Infrastructure

In Cisco Live on July 11, 2011 at 00:04

Well, Day two of Cisco Live 2011 for me (for some this is your first day as you are still arriving).

For me, I am taking an 8 hour Techtorial on Next Generation Data Center Infrastructure TECDCT-8001. This is a paid seminar that has covered some great material – and probably help to generate some future blog posts as well!

Mike Herbert took the first part of the class and did a great review of some of the changes that have happened in the data center over the past few years. From the evolving 3-tier architecture with Spanning Tree and such all the way to Fabric Path and TRILL. Nothing was really in depth but was a great setting of the stage for the day. Some of the things that I liked was the discussion on the Data Center Standards and where different things are in the flow. Another nice discussion was data center cabling and the potential future of cabling. From the traditional home-run cabling that many of us use today to the discussion of top of rack (TOR) and end of row (EOR) drivers with regards to 10g and beyond cabling. Problems discussed where primarily the cost of running those lengths of cables to the cross-talk potentials due to the power required to drive the data. Oh yeah, Mike gets some bonus points for mentioning LISP during the presentation as well.

bag, cisco live, CL11

Cisco Live 2011 – Saturday (Registration)

In Cisco Live on July 9, 2011 at 18:24

Well the day has finally come, it is time for Cisco Live 2011 in Las Vegas, NV. Everything here is looking great, things are still getting setup but the Wireless is up and working, registration opened early, and I am set to go.

So, the big question every year is what does the bag look like? Well, here is your answer – looks great! Tom ( @NetworkingNerd) mentioned to me that these are the TSA Friendly backpack bags, AWESOME! What is a TSA Friendly bag? Well, you can check the TSA website for exact details – link – but in short they are bags where the laptop storage section open like a butterfly to go through x-ray without having to remove the laptop from the bag.

So, here are pics of the bag. It is black, orange, and gray – not a bad color combination at all!

…just about time for Cisco Live 2011

In Cisco Live on July 7, 2011 at 11:29

Well the time is just about here, the time for Cisco Live 2011 in Las Vegas, NV.

I will post updates as the days progress, just like I did last year. Hoping to recap the experiences, mention the bad, highlight the good, and recognize the great.

The posts should be fast and furious – my twitter feed should be streaming!

To all those who will be there with me, safe travels, good times and see you soon!

ccie, CL11, data center, Rumor

CCIE Data Center – Rumored

In CCIE, Cisco Live, Data Center, Nexus on July 5, 2011 at 08:12

CCIE

With Networkers, err Cisco Live, coming up quickly in less then a week the rumor mill is a buzzing with some good rumors. There is a rumor that a new little brother in the Nexus line is coming, but the one that has my attention is perhaps a new CCIE level certification – might even be retiring one that has overlapping technologies (storage). Over on 2bccie.com, there is a post in regards to the CCIE Data Center track being discussed on day during the CCIE Lunch at Cisco Live Melbourne – link.

While that is all still rumors, here is what I can gather by researching available resources and taking some educated guesses on what would be on the lab. I will also admit that this was briefly discussed at Cisco Live 2010 and that was in a session that would have the knowledge about the topic, so much of this comes from what I can read from my chicken scratch notes. Obviously, Cisco has been working on this for some time and the maturity of the line is finally at the stage and market saturation where this certification makes sense.