Category: training

The materials and descriptions for the Building Network Automation Solutions online course got a slight makeover: all live session recordings are now part of self-study materials, and the module description pages use consistent format for self-study materials and live sessions.

Next on the janitor’s list: a similar makeover for the Data Center online course.

An engineer attending Ansible for Networking Engineers online course sent me this feedback:

This is a great place to learn Ansible and Network Automation from scratch. Starting with an emphasis on the fundamentals (YAML, JSON, Jinja2, how to group your network devices for automation, etc.) you progressively build up towards useful network automation.

He particularly liked the additional features that are part of any ipSpace.net online course:

In mid-May, I ran an onsite network automation workshop, and the manager organizing the workshop for his team invited me to a dinner with his peers. Not surprisingly, they wanted to hear about the topics covered in the workshop, and as soon as I mentioned Network-Infrastructure-as-Code several of them said “yes, that definitely needs to be covered.”

So many things have happened since I wrote “this is what we’re going to do in 2018” blog post. We ran

• An automation course and a data center course, resulting in three new modules in the automation course, and over 20 hours of fresh content
• Three workshops, two of them brand new and resulting in material for VMware NSX Deep Dive and AWS Networking webinars (both coming in early autumn).

We also did a ton of webinars:

On Tuesday I had the last webinar in spring 2018. One more online course session and it will be time for long summer break. In the meantime, we’re already planning the autumn events:

• We’ll start with Lean Start in Network Automation workshop in Zurich, Switzerland, on August 30^th. Register here.
• Building Network Automation Solutions online course starts on September 20^th.

We also have the first webinars scheduled:

• We’ll start with two introductory webinars: SDDC 101 on August 28^th and SD-WAN Overview on September 4^th.
• The first session of technical deep dive into VMware NSX will be on September 11^th.
• Amazon Web Service Networking workshop was a huge success, and we’ll turn it into a webinar in early October.
• There will be an interesting math-focused webinar on October 8^th;
• Dinesh Dutt will talk about fabric troubleshooting in mid-November;

You can attend all these webinars with an ipSpace.net webinar subscription.

Wow. Where did the spring 2018 go? It’s almost June… and time for a refreshed list of upcoming webinars:

• Christoph Jaggi will run do another free webinar – this time on Ethernet Encryptors– on June 5^th;
• I’ll run an Amazon Web Services Networking workshop in Zurich on June 13^th;
• We had to change the schedule a little bit: the last webinar before the summer break will be an overview of real-life automation wins on June 19^th.

When the Spring 2018 Building Network Automation Solutions online course started, we didn’t know whether we’d run another course in 2018, so we offered engineers who wanted to get an early start Believer price.

The wait is over: the autumn 2018 course starts on September 18^th. The schedule of the live sessions is already online, and we also have the first guest speakers. We’ll announce them in early June at which time you will no longer be able to get the Enthusiast price, so register ASAP.

Got this question from a networking engineer who couldn’t decide whether to go for CCIE Data Center certification or attend my Building Next-Generation Data Center online course:

I am considering pursuing CCIE DC. I found your Next-Generation DC course very interesting. Now I am bit confused trying to decide whether to start with CCIE DC first and then do your course.

You might be in a similar position, so here’s what I told him.

The networking engineers attending the Building Network Automation Solutions online course created numerous amazing automation solutions, most of them already deployed in production networks.

I described some of them in my Troopers 2018 Real-Life Automation Wins talk. The presentation is online and the video has been published on YouTube a few days ago. I hope you’ll find it as inspirational as the Troopers attendees did.

Did you create an awesome automation solution? I’d like to hear about it!

This blog post was initially sent to the subscribers of my SDN and Network Automation mailing list. Subscribe here.

When VMware launched the first version of NSX for vSphere more than four years ago, the NSBU team reached out to me and asked me to create a sponsored webinar describing NSX fundamentals, its architecture, and high-level deployment guidelines.

In the meantime we discussed updating the materials, but nothing ever happened. Time to fix that, this time from a vendor-neutral perspective. We’ll start with a day-long event on April 19^th 2018 in Zurich, Switzerland.

We managed to get another awesome lineup of speakers for the Spring 2018 Building Next-Generation Data Center online course.

Russ White, one of the authors of CCDE and CCAr programs and highly respected book author will start the course with a topic everyone should always consider when designing new infrastructure: how do you identify tradeoffs and manage complexity, making sure you meet the customer requirements while at the same time having an easy-to-operate infrastructure.

In March 2018, we’ll continue the crazy content producing pace you’ve seen in January and February:

• We’ll have the first part of NSX, ACI or EVPN webinar on March 1st. This session will cover the basics (don’t expect too many details), a follow-up session on April 24th with Mitja Robas will go into design considerations;
• The EVPN Technical Deep Dive series with Dinesh Dutt starts on March 6th;
• Elisa and Paolo will run the final part of Network Visibility with Flow Data on March 8th;
• Last webinar in March: another installment in the leaf-and-spine saga – Multi-Pod and Multi-Site Fabrics with Lukas Krattiger on March 29th;

March is also the Troopers month. I’ll run a Hands-On Network Automation workshop there and have a motivational presentation during the main conference.

Although it’s almost three months till the start of the Building Next-Generation Data Center online course, we already have most of the guest speakers. Today I’d like to introduce the first two (although they need no introduction).

You might have heard about Russ White. He was known as Mr. CCDE when that program started and recently focused more on data centers, open networking and whitebox switching. He’s also an authority on good network design and architecture, network complexity, and tradeoffs you have to make when designing a network.

Got an interesting set of questions from one of my readers. He started with:

I really like networks but I don't know if I am doing enough for this community. Most of my work is involved with technologies which are already discovered by people and I am not really satisfied with it.

Well, first you want to decide whether you want to be (primarily) a researcher (focusing on discovering new stuff), an engineer (mostly figuring out how to build useful things by using existing stuff), or an administrator (configuring stuff).

J Metz published a great article describing six hard truths not taught in school. As all good things should come in 7-tuples, here’s another one I was told ages ago when I was a young hotshot full of myself:

Professions were created for a reason – they enable people to do the work they’re qualified to do.

Needless to say, it took me decades to fully understand its implications.