It Is Always the Network
Now that we have completed five Build Day Live events, there are a few patterns that have emerged and a particular area where we have steadily improved our game. If you have watched the live streams, you will know that it is always the network that gives us the most trouble. On one Build Day, I had to use my manager’s voice and say that we were not going to troubleshoot the network any further but needed to do a field expedient temporary configuration. The core of the problem is that we bring some network in the vBrownBag traveling lab and need to integrate that networking with the vendor’s lab equipment. I try to make the vBrownBag a little like a production environment, so there are VLANs that separate different networks for management, storage, and workload VMs. Most vendor environments are labs where networking is kept simple. The solution has been to expand the traveling lab network and use less of the vendor’s network. The current lab provides 10 x 10Gbe ports and 10 x 1Gbe ports for the vendor’s equipment.
