QuistED.net

CCNP SPCOR 350-501 Official Cert Guide ( Release December 2024 )
https://www.amazon.com/CCNP-SPCOR-350-501-Official-Guide/dp/0135324807
No Ciscopress link yet.

SPCOR Cisco study Materials
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/s/learning-plan-detail-standard?ltui__urlRecordId=a1c3i000003OvP0AAK&ltui__urlRedirect=learning-plan-detail-standard

SPCOR Cisco Official Learning Matrix  
https://learningcontent.cisco.com/documents/marketing/exam-topics/CCNP_SP_v1.0_Learning_Matrix.xlsx

 
SPCOR Videocourses
Luc de Ghein’s MPLS Fundamentals:
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/mpls-fundamentals/9780134675398/

Nick Russo’s pluralsight courses.
https://www.pluralsight.com/authors/nick-russo
https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/cisco-service-provider-spcor-350-501-intro-cert
https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/cisco-multiprotocol-label-switching-implementing

INE.com:
https://my.ine.com/Networking/learning-paths/83c88b88-9041-4079-b913-2bd0474dae26/service-provider-core-exam-350-501-spcor

INE Live Webinar: Understanding Inter-AS L3VPN – Option A/B/C
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT0eQPMj2Ck

CBTnuggets:
https://www.cbtnuggets.com/it-training/cisco/ccnp-service-provider-core

SPCOR Unofficial Studyguide
https://ccnp-sp.gitbook.io/studyguide

This study guide reads as more of a lab workbook than a textbook. I would highly recommend labbing along with each section. Each article typically starts with some background information and theory on the topic. You will then see a “Lab” section that contains a topology diagram and a code block with startup configs, which you can use to quickly build your own lab and follow along.

SPCOR Cisco Live PDFs
https://red9.nl/ccnp-service-provider-350-501-spcor-study-materials/

The CCNP Service Provider v1.0 Learning Matrix for the 350-501 SPCOR training references a lot of Cisco Live presentations. Unfortunately almost all links are broken at the time of writing this post. I’ve been able to find all except one of the presentations from all over the internet from a mix of AD infested presentation sharing sites.
Here they are, straight up linked PDFs to save you from the waste of time

IOS-XR Workbook
https://www.fryguy.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Cisco-IOS-XR-Introduction-Ver-1.pdf

Cisco Press Books/Video
https://www.ciscopress.com/store/ip-routing-on-cisco-ios-ios-xe-and-ios-xr-an-essential-9781587144233
https://www.ciscopress.com/store/mpls-fundamentals-9781587051975
https://www.ciscopress.com/store/troubleshooting-bgp-a-practical-guide-to-understanding-9781587144646
https://www.ciscopress.com/store/bgp-troubleshooting-livelessons-9780134582870
https://www.ciscopress.com/store/bgp-design-and-implementation-paperback-9781587144707
https://www.ciscopress.com/store/end-to-end-qos-network-design-quality-of-service-for-9780133116106
https://www.ciscopress.com/store/qos-for-ip-mpls-networks-9780133434996
https://www.ciscopress.com/store/layer-2-vpn-architectures-9781587051685

SPCOR Roadmap
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/s/cisco-certification-roadmaps?tabset-4a075=a9b02
SPCOR V1.1 will go live on 20 september 2024.

Today I had some fun with A.I. trying to generate network diagrams.

I asked an untrained A.I. model to generate “a simple MPLS topology” for my study notes. While the image looked like a computer network it still had many incoherent additions.

For the second image I used the prompt “a diagram explaining the difference between MPLS P, PE and CE notes”.

It will be interesting to see if we can learn the model to generate better topologies and streamline documentation.

Uploading files to a Cisco TAC case.

Have you ever needed to upload large (log)files from an appliance to a Cisco TAC?

Troubleshooting DNA-Center for example usually involves creating Root Cause Analysis (RCA) files which can be well over 1GB. After generating the files we have to copy them from the controller and either mail them to the case, or upload them via the webinterface with the Case File Uploader. Both of these options require additional steps of copying and transferring. 

Customer eXperience Drive.

There is an easier way to upload the files directly from the controller using the Customer eXperience Drive (CXD).

The Customer eXperience Drive (CXD) is a multi-protocol file upload service with no limitation on the uploaded file size. It allows Cisco customers with active Service Requests (SRs) to upload data directly to a case using a unique set of credentials created per SR. The protocols supported by CXD are natively supported by Cisco products which allows for uploading directly from Cisco devices to SRs.

You will need the following things;

• Service Request Number
• CXD Token

To generate the CXD Token complete these steps:

Step 1   Log in to SCM.
Step 2   Open the case you would like to get the upload token for.
Step 3   Click the Attachments tab.
Step 4   Click Generate Token. Once the token is generated it will be displayed next to the Generate Token button.

Uploading files using CURL

Once we have the SR number (SR60000000) and the token (aaaabbbbccccdddd) we can use that to upload directly from a controller. We can transfer the file with our SR credentials to https://cxd.cisco.com/home/ and the file will be automatically added to the case.

CURL without a proxy:

• curl -T “[path/to/file]/[file]” -u 60000000:aaaabbbbccccdddd https://cxd.cisco.com/home/

CURL with a proxy:

• curl -T “[path/to/file]/[file]” -x http://[proxy:8080] -u 60000000:aaaabbbbccccdddd https://cxd.cisco.com/home/

Sample Python Code to use the PUT API

Note that the following code assumes the file is stored in the same path you are running it from.

import requests
from requests.auth import HTTPBasicAuth
url = 'https://cxd.cisco.com/home/'
username = 'SR Number'
password = 'Upload Token'
auth = HTTPBasicAuth(username, password)
filename = 'showtech.txt'
f = open(filename, 'rb')
r = requests.put(url + filename, f, auth=auth, verify=False)
r.close()
f.close()
if r.status_code == 201:
    print("File Uploaded Successfully")

Enjoy your no limit uploads!

Building a use case from the CCDP FLG:

Topology:

• Each site has two links to their HQ (top) via WAN (Prio) and Internet ( backup ).
• Internet and WAN connectivity goes over multipoint GRE tunnels to the sites with static NHRP mappings.
• Cost of Internet links are increased so they’re used as backup links.
• Backbone area configured over WAN and Internet

Building the LAB:

OSPF Design

Building the Backbone:

Adding the tunnel interface and NHRP mappings on the WAN Hub Router (R1):

And we have some routing on the Hubs:

Basic cloud computing

• Essential Characteristics
  • Broad network access
  • Rapid elasticity
  • Measured Service
  • On-demand Self-service
  • Resource pooling
• Service Models
  • SaaS – Software as a Service
  • PaaS – Platform as a Service
  • IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service
• Deployment Models
  • Public
    • Provisitioned for open use by the general public
  • Private
    • Cloud for the exclusive use by a single organization
    • Managed by IT or thirdparty
    • on-premise or off-premise
  • Hybrid
    • Two or more cloud infrastructures combined
  • Community
    • Multiple organisations combined

What is an API

• A precise specification written by providers of a service
• You must follow the specification when using that service
• An API decribes what functionality is available, how ti must be used and what formats it will accept as input or return as output

(more…)

ACI > Contructs

Fundamentals:

• Open and Secure
• Apps and Infrastructure
• Physical and Virtual
• On-Site and Cloud

Bringing up the Fabric:

• Physical requirements
  • Power
  • Cabling + mgmt0
  • Rack and Stack
• Power on/Connect to APICs
  • How many APICs
  • Fabric Name
  • Admin Password
  • Setup Fabric Network ( IP & VLAN)
• Log into the APIC (HTTP out of band)
  • NTP
  • Route Reflectors
  • MGMT IP Fabric
  • Leaf and Spine Name/#

Fabric Discovery

• Zero touch fabric, the controller does everything
• APIC uses LLDP to get information about the leaf switches it’s connected to
• First the leaf is dicovered and will be named (101)
• Then the Spine is connected and named  (201)
• Then the leafs are discovered (103,104)

(more…)

Distributed Data center Goals

• Ensure business continuity
• Distributed applications
• Seamless workload mobility
• Maximize compute resources

Challenges in traditional Layer 2 VPN:

• Flooding Behavior
  • Unknown unicast for mac propagation
  • Unicast Flooding reaches all sites
• Pseudo-wire Maintenance
  • Full mesh of Pseudo-wire is complex
  • Head-End replication is a common problem
• Multi-Homing
  • Requires additional protocols and extends STP
  • Malfunctions impact multipe sites

(more…)

VDC Configuration

• Show license usage
• Show vdc
• Show vdc membership
• vdc DCC01
• allocate resource command
• limit-resource command
• show run vdc
• switchto vdc DCC01

FEX Configuration

• Enable feature FEX
• configure fex 100
• interface e1/25
• switchport mode fex-fabric
• fex associate 100
• show fex

VPC Configuration

• feature vpc
• vpc domain 100
• peer-keepalive destination 10.10.10.2 source 10.10.10.1 vrf management
• sh vpc
• int po10
  • vpc peer-link
• int e 1/25
  • channel-group 10 mode active
• int po10
  • vpc 10

(more…)

UCS Physical Infrastructure

•  Fabric Interconnect  ( 6248UP )
  • 32x Fixed unified ports: 1/10 GE or 1/2/4/8 FC
  • Expansion Module
  • Run in an Active / Active state for the dataplane
  • Run in a clustered Active/Passive state for the management
  • Connected to the UCS Chassis
  • Managed via UCSM or Cli (NX-OS)

•  UCS Chassis
  • 6U Chassis, 32″Deep
  • Passive backplane
  • 8x Half width blades
  • 4x Full width blades
  • Everything is managed by the Fabric Interconnects.

Connecting the Fabric Interconnects to the LAN and SAN:

(more…)

FCoE is short for Fibre Channel over Ethernet.

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) solves the problem of organizations having to run parallel network infrastructures for their local area networks (LANs) and their storage area networks (SANs). As a result, they have to operate separate switches, host bus adapters (HBAs), network interface cards (NICs) and cables for each of these networks. Even utilizing a virtualization solution like VMware can actually increase the number of network adapters required to carry traffic out of the servers.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/nexus-7000-series-switches/white_paper_c11-560403.html

• FIP – FCOE Initialization Protocol
• FLOGI – Fabric login
• FcF – FibreChannel Forwarder
• FSPF – FibreChannel Shortest Path First

(more…)