Wednesday article

content/blog/wk3day3.md

@@ -1,7 +1,96 @@
 ---
-title: "Week 3, Wednesday:"
+title: "Week 3, Wednesday: Arista 7280SR with ASR9k"
 date: 2024-08-14T21:55:00+02:00
 draft: false
 ---
 
 {{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/headline/dropstation.png" alt="Credit: Drop Station, Youtube" >}}
+
+This morning I got up _bright and early_ at around 10:00. At this point, Quinn has worked already
+for about 3.5hrs, and I don't know quite how he does it. Maybe it's because I tend to go to bed at
+03:00 and he goes upstairs at 22:00? Nah, that can't be it!
+
+I boot up Pim O.S. and think about the day ahead. I can't make FrysIX stamps, because there's
+something wrong with the stamp-head. Marina is in contact with the vendor, and has scheduled a video
+call to go over the mechanism today. We looked yesterday and have a suspicion what might be wrong,
+but before we tinker, we'll wait for the video call. I still have some time before the barbecue!
+
+Instead, I make good on my own promise to keep my workroom tidy. I grab the vacuum cleaner and go
+over the whole floor - it's quite a novel experience for me to be able to even _see_ the floor, let
+alone _vacuum_ it. On the floor next to the blue pattern wall, there's a little bit of white powdery
+dust; I think it may be the remnants of the fungus that triggered my whole cleaning experience two
+weeks ago. I make short work of it, and drench it in chlorine water, which also doubles as a nice
+mopping agent. I mop up the rim of the floor twice, and the rest of the room once. At this point it
+smells like a swimming pool in my room, so I escape it upstairs.
+
+For lunch, we rummaged around the fridge a little bit and I found two hamburger patties which we
+never barbecued. Let's not let two perfectly good patties go to waste! So I fry them in the pan
+while Marina slices the leftover bread - she shows me the holes that the yeast left - hah, yeast
+fart holes. I'm such a child. The hamburger (see below) does hit the spot though!
+
+In the afternoon I spend a little bit of time getting to know Arista switches and its EOS operating
+system. I find it incredibly intuitive, with the concepts being very similar to what I already use,
+notably Centec and Cisco/Nexus. I play around with some OSPF, OSPFv3, enable LDP and MPLS, and do a
+quick loadtest - the thing happily forwards traffic with IP4, IP6 and MPLS at line rate - to be
+expected. I make a proto-config and prepare the switches for later tonight. I'll deploy them at
+AS25091.
+
+Before dinner, I spend some time pairing and chopping veggies; I have sugar snaps, onions, spring
+onions, _bimi_ (a sort of broccolini), bell pepper, carrots, bokchoi and soybean shoots. I blanche
+the larger veggies, and then yeet them all into a wok, stirfrying them with some oil.
+
+After dinner I do some more investigating of the button press and Marina sends a few e-mails to the
+vendor - who is _super_ nice by the way. After exchanging a few tips and videos showing where we
+think the problem is, they offer to send a new stamping head while we prepare to ship back this one.
+But, tomorrow they'll have a quick call to figure out if there's something else that could be done.
+We concluded that there is about 0.5-0.75mm of play needed to let the stamp work. It's too
+complicated to explain, so I'll just show a picture.
+
+Then at around 21:00 I grab some optics and patchcables, velcro, and tools in my backpack, and take
+the 100G linecard for the ASR9010, as well as the two preconfigured Arista 7280SR switches, and make
+my way to the datacenters. One will go at Interaction in Glattbrugg, and the other at NTT in
+R&uuml;mlang, connected by a few kilometers of dark fiber. A hypervisor has taken the day off, so
+I'll go take a look at it on console, while I'm there.
+
+I first let the 2x100G line card acclimatize by inserting it half-way into the chassis. I then
+install the Arista, connect it to the router with 2x10G (will become 100G) and to a few CWDM
+channels to the other datacenter (will also become 100G, optics are en route). I add it to the mgmt
+VRF and serial console server, and it's up and running quickly! I then insert the blade and wait for
+it to boot, it too happily registers itself in IOS/XR and is ready to serve. Nice!
+
+Then I go to my favorite [[IP-Max](https://ip-max/)] point of presence - NTT R&uuml;mlang, where I
+have to make two long-haul patches (from here to _Lauss-ane_) and again connect 2x10G to the other
+Arista, which is also connected with 2x10G to the first one back in Interxion. All links come up,
+and the switch is further quickly installed and ready for service.
+
+The operation takes me a good three hours though. At the end of it, I feel exhilerated and tired at
+the same time. There's something about this _digital gardening_, a term I heard from my buddy Lee at
+work one day: I find it very rewarding to come home after a night in the colo, having done physical
+labor and knowing that what I did, that day, was directly and immediately useful: the blinkenlights
+go blinken, and the BGP session comes up, and traffic passes from Zurich to Lausanne directly rather
+than via the backup path over Geneva. "I did a thing today".
+
+With that, I drive home, and pass out. If all goes well, tomorrow I get to play with some wireless
+microphones that I ordered -- after having seen a few reviews (one of them proudly noting that even
+[[MKBHD](https://www.youtube.com/user/marquesbrownlee)] uses them!), and hopefully also with the
+electrostatic cutting bed for the Silhouette Cameo.
+
+Welterusten!
+
+## Pictures of the Day
+
+{{< gallery-category >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-14/IMG_0645.JPG" caption="I promised myself I would keep my workroom clean, so I started off the morning with a vacuuming and deep scrub of the floor " >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-14/IMG_0646.JPG" caption="Lunch time: the bread Aad and I baked has really nice holes, and I like!" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-14/IMG_0647.JPG" caption="We have a few leftover hamburger patties, so I quickly fry them up and we make a make-shift burger. Delish!" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-14/IMG_0651.JPG" caption="I am going to deploy two Arista 7280SR MPLS transport switches tonight; here they are, pre-configured and staged in IPng's lab rack" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-14/IMG_0652.JPG" caption="Our evening meal is simply a stirfry wok with lots-o-veg, and chicken and rice to go with it. It makes for a very nice summer dish." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-13/20240813_220724.jpg" caption="Marina and I take a good look at the faulty stamping press for the 59mm pins. We think we found the problem - TAC support ticket raised :)" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-14/IMG_0654.JPG" caption="At datacenter #1, I pre-condition the 2x100G blade for AS25091 first" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-14/IMG_0657.JPG" caption="Then, I install the Arista, hook it up to some WDM channels to datacenter #2 and to the ASR9010 below. Later, these will become 100G ports (optics are underway)" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-14/IMG_0658.JPG" caption="I finish the evening at datacenter #2, my favorite one at AS25091, with the other Arista switch and a very loaded ASR9006." >}}
+{{< /gallery-category >}}
+
+{{< gallery-modal >}}
+{{< gallery-script >}}
+