CCIE Datacenter in 3-Months

Its been a year now and I still haven't taken up my lab exam yet. Its now time to call the shot.
I have been preparing slowly but steadily, I have had lots of practical experience in realtime implementation. Its now time to certify all that.

I have decided to fix my lab in the month of July. I have just 75days for my lab. I will be documenting my progress as i proceed in this blog.

Iam not sure if this is doable but I will prepare towards it.

I will prepare effectively 6 hours a day. For the first 30days, I will concentrate on Nexus Switching and UCS. Followed by SAN and ACE subjects.I will be using PEC, ciscolive as I progress.

I have done multiple datacenter rollouts using the cisco Nexus, MDS Switches & UCS & am pretty good  in configuring them now. But its the CCIE Lab exam & it always throws us a googly.

I will start with Nexus 1000v, because thats something i wanted to clear, thats the least I have worked on, independently.

UCS Blade server estimates !!

How many servers  can a half width blade server in UCS handle ?  Have you considered using fabric path for our datacenter design ?

If you have asked this question or have been at the receiving end of this question or have thought about these questions then please read this post and the followup post and share it as much as possible.

The cisco UCS with B200 M3 half width blade can cater 768GB RAM and has 2 Intel Xeon processor. But we will consider 256GB of ram to have been installed.

You can get enough information about these blades from cisco site in this link.

So if we are basing your VM based on the RAM and processor requirements then; 

All processor & RAM requirements considered below are hypothetical, I understand all server requirements vary but this only for calculation & understanding. I have considered the 256GB of memory, which is a cost efficient solution. The maximum amount of memory on a B230M2 is 512GB.

Assumption-1:

Assuming each of our VM server requires 16GB RAM,  then  256/16=16

We can have 14VM + 1 ESXi per blade (considering processor requirements)

So if we populate 8blades, we get 14*8=112servers per chassis.

If we have 10chassis then we have 112*10=1120 servers

Assumption-2:

Assuming each of our  VM server requires 12GB RAM, then  256/12=22

We can have 18VM + 1 ESXi per blade(considering processor requirements)

So if we populate 8blades, we get 18*8=144 servers per chassis.

If we have 10chassis then we have 144*10=1440 servers

Assumption-3:

Assuming each of our  VM server requires 8GB RAM, then  256/8=32

We can have 28VM + 1 ESXi per blade(considering processor requirements)

So if we populate 8blades, we get 28*8=224 servers per chassis.

If we have 10chassis then we have 224*10=2240 servers

This is all using VIC card with 40GB uplink per blade.

Now lets  assume we are going in for a virtual desktop environment then lets spin up a quick calculation;

Assumption-4:

Assuming each of the desktop requires 4GB RAM, then 256/4=64

we can have 56 desktops per blade(considering processor requirements & memory expansion)

so if we populate 8 blades, we get 56*8=448 desktops peers chassis.

If we have 10chassis then we have 448*10=4480 desktops.

This should give a good idea on the amount of servers that can be accommodated on a blade. 

Please do share your comments !

To be continued.......

Nexus 5600 - upgraded datacenter access layer

The datacenter is the hot cake in the high speed information age. Cisco has announced the nexus 5600 series switches for the datacenter access layer. Am excited because we have the true 40G ports available on them which means it can handle more traffic at the access layer.

The newer models are labeled c5672UP & c56128P.

The c5672UP has;

48ports which can handle  1/10G  which gives a total of 48x10=480Gbps,
full-duplex on each ports which means a bandwidth of  480x2=960Gbps
6ports which can handle 40G which gives a total of 6x40=240Gbps,
full duplex for the ports which mean a bandwidth of 240x2=480Gps

So a total of 960+480=1440Gbps throughput on the switch. No only that it gives us 16UP ports which  supports FC and FCOE. The switch also supports VXLAN.

The c56128P has;

onboard 48ports 1/10G  & 4 ports supporting 40G onboard. It also supports&nbsp two expansion slots to support 24 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet and FCoE or 8/4/2-Gbps Fibre Channel and two ports of 40 Gigabit Ethernet using QSFP optics.


It has a lot more packed in. Further details can be found here in the cisco data sheet.

Verified scalability guide for version 7.0 version of the NXOS for the 5K series of switch will be of help to know how much the device can support.