It is hard to believe but in just a few months it will be time for the annual geek-camp (term credit goes to Fish) called Cisco Live! Once again we are heading back to Las Vegas at the beautiful Mandalay Bay Convention Center. While Vegas may not be my first choice of locations (I prefer Orlando – something to do with a Mouse), it does provide one of the best venues for Cisco Live and the attendees. There are plenty of places to stay, eat, and things to do before and after the conference. Where else can you go from Egypt (Luxor), to the Middle Ages (Excalibur), to the streets of New York (NYNY), to Paris (Paris), to Italy (Venetian), to the the President’s Party Place (Trump Hotel) in a single night? No place but Vegas!
So the big question is usually “Why do I want to go?” or “Why should I go?”, well let me tell you – Education, People, Vendors, People, the Customer Appreciation Event (CAE), and People. As you can see, I mentioned people over and over again. Out of all the things that Cisco Live brings together, its the people that really make it the event what it is. The picture below is two strange fellows being egged on by Denise, I blame her for this embarrassing picture. Just glad I am not one of those guys – oh wait.
Now don’t get me wrong – the education opportunities of the sessions are amazing, you can find classes from basic to way over expert levels there. You want to learn about VXLAN – last year they had at least 5 sessions last year that covered VXLAN:
Fryguy's Blog
Cisco Live 2017 is just over a month away, amazing how the time flies! There is time to [register,][1] so what are you waiting for? You waiting for the closing keynote speaker to be announced
If that is the case then you missed the announcement last week from the @CiscoLive twitter account. There they announced the closing Keynote Speaker as none other than Bryan Cranston!
Bryan is a multi-talented actor, voice actor, screenwriter, director, producer, and even an author. His most famous role is that of Walter White from Breaking Bad. I am really curious to see what he will say as I was not able to find any TED talks or anything else from him. There is a good chance that this will rank up there with William Shatner. Perhaps Bryan has a boat story that we need to know about ( you had to be there!). Based on the below video from 2013, I am sure there will be some great entertainment.
How many of us have a home network rack in a closet someplace and leave the door open (or just off) to help keep things cool? Has your home lab been tucked away under the stairs so you don’t need to hear it? Or is it in the open so it stays cool and the noise drives you (or your other half) nuts? Well, let me tell you about what I am using to keep my home rack cool in a closet.
For me, I have a bunch of Ubiquiti devices (future post), Synology NAS, Cable Modem, UPS’, and some Intel NUC servers in my home rack. I also have a decent amount of lab Cisco and Juniper gear that I spin up when necessary ( I use an APC managed PDU ). Overall it is fairly quiet, but I still wanted to keep it out of the eyes of others and also to keep the kids from touching anything. What I found is that when I closed the door, the temperature in the closet would rocket up and I would start to get temperature alarms from devices. That forced me to keep the door open, not an optimal solution for when guests are over.
It is time for a [Cisco Live][1] update… and this update has some information about the Cisco Store, contests, and what everyone is waiting for, the CAE headliner over at the T-Mobile Arena!
Once again this year Cisco Live will be giving out daily Amazon Gift Cards to people who submit their best photos/videos/gifs on Twitter and Instagram with the tag of #CLUS. You can snap a photo around the Cisco Live sign, Super Hero Cape and Mask, Keynotes, Cisco Hat, Tiles, just about anything. This is a great contest – and the prizes are awesome!
For the overly ambitious people, create an album and share that with the #CLUS tag as well! They are rumored to be giving away a 2018 Social Pass to their favorite album! Now that is a cool prize!
Yes!!! I passed the Juniper JNCIE lab last year!! It was actually back in May 2016 that I_ _earned my JNCIE-ENT #567 and I wanted to finally take a moment and blog about my experiences, study approach, as well as my overall impression of the certification track. 
Let me answer the first question that you may have, what took me so long to blog about my experience as most people who accomplish this shout to the world. Well, that is fairly simple in case you have not noticed my blogging in 2016 started to wane, if not almost disappear. That was primarily due to two things, studying for the JNCIE and work got really really busy. About 50% of every month last year was spent on the road. I had a customer that was doing a big Data Center move and it just kept me overly busy. Much of that has now calmed down and finally allowed me to get this long overdue post out.
