Ansible Playbooks

My previous two blog posts (YAML Ain’t Markup Language and Ansible Inventory Files) have been leading up to this. In the YAML post I mentioned that .yml files can be used to make Ansible Playbooks and that’s what we’ll be going over in this blog. If you’ve heard about tools like Chef, for example, it…

Ansible Inventory Files

What is Ansible? The elevator pitch for Ansible is that it’s an automation engine, not unlike Puppet and Chef. However, Ansible doesn’t require the use of any agents on the target machines. Which is always appealing to IT folks, because not only are we automating and making things consistent, we’re also taking away administrative headaches…

YAML Ain’t Markup Language

Markup Languages Let’s start at the beginning. What is a Markup Language? Simply put, it’s a way of writing something on a computer that might help it present as visually more appealing to the end user. For example HTML allows web designers to change font size, background color, and introduce paragraphs. There are other markup…

Getting to Know Cisco HyperFlex

After being with the Cisco Insieme BU, and focusing mostly on ACI, for the last three years I’ve made a bit of a job change. I’m still sort of in Technical Marketing because it’s been an amazing path for me, but I’m now actually a co-host on Cisco’s TechwiseTV! Robb Boyd has been running TechwiseTV…

ACI 101 – Policy Overview

Welcome back to another blog in the ACI 101 series. In the video below I’ll be giving an overview on the policy side of Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure. Mainly we’ll be concentrating on the Application Profile. The Application Profile, in the context of ACI, refers to how we deploy applications on our network as well…

ACI 101 – Logical Network Constructs

Here we are again, with another #ACIMonday! This week I’ll be giving an overview on some of the basic constructs in ACI. These aren’t necessarily new concepts if you’re familiar with networking and data centers or private/public clouds already. We’ll be talking about tenants, VRFs, and bridge domains. A tenant is basically a logical separation…

Cisco ACI – Application Virtual Switch

This article takes a closer look at the Cisco Application Virtual Switch. Introduction In my last article I talked about VMM integration with VMware vSphere and Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure. I only covered using the traditional vSphere Distributed Switch, but there is another option: the Cisco AVS (Application Virtual Switch). For those familiar with the…