One of our customers had an interesting problem recently that caused a network outage in a critical part of the network. An interface blade was inserted into a Cisco Cat6500, but the blade didn't pass diagnostics. The blade had been checked out in a lab switch, but for some reason, perhaps a bent...

I've been doing some more reading about network event handling and found some interesting articles and a few facts that I'd like to share. I have my own ideas about handling network events, but am open to learning what other people do and why they prefer their approach. It helps me learn new...

If you are like me, you probably have a long list of projects around the house and many of them in an unfinished state. How does that happen? For me, I'm usually working away when I come to the point where I 1) Don't have the right tool, 2) ran out of something or 3) am interrupted by a phone...

Utility services like DNS, DHCP, NTP, AAA, and network management contribute to a smoothly running network. I'm an advocate for designated utility subnets for these services. Why have utility services subnets? It allows the network administrators to more easily monitor, manage, protect, and provision...

It seems like the pace of virtualization has recently increased - or perhaps I'm becoming more aware of it. Cisco announced their Unified Computing System (UCS) earlier this year and the Nexus 7000 last year. Both have significant virtualization components relative to the data center. Cisco isn't...