Friday

content/blog/wk6day5.md

@@ -1,7 +1,109 @@
 ---
-title: "Week 6, Friday:"
+title: "Week 6, Friday: Loadtesting VPP"
 date: 2024-09-06T21:55:00+02:00
-draft: true
 ---
 
-{{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/headline/todo.png" alt="Credit: " >}}
+{{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/headline/fluidified-03.png" alt="Credit: Fluidified, YouTube" >}}
+
+In the morning I made good on a promise from the other day to take a look at the second 100G wave
+that IP-Max is operating from Glattbrugg (Zurich) to Frankfurt. Although the performance is good and
+the light levels are fine, there are receive errors on the port in Frankfurt, and the wavelength
+provider is seeing low light levels in the Glattbrugg side. A technician has put a loop in IP-Max's
+rack and then the low light level alarm clears, so I think perhaps the optic is dirty (although it
+was capped), oer maybe it's just plain faulty.
+
+Off I go, at 10:30 on my loaner-bike (also a Stromer ST5, but a fancier one with
+[[ABS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system)] and everything. The bikeride is
+pleasant -- I've almost forgotten how it is to do a whole 10km ride without having to dismount three
+times to reset/powercycle the torque sensor. I hope that Stromvelo gets my bike fixed this weekend!
+
+Indeed, at Interxion it turns out that it was a dirty or faulty optic. I drain the link to
+Frankfurt, and 25G of traffic sloshes to NTT and onwards to Frankfurt via that route, no harm done.
+I take a cleaning pen and once again clean all fibers up to the patch panel, and then swap the CFP
+from the other 100G port into this one. Connect everything, undrain the link, and monitor for a few
+minutes. No more errors, whohoo!
+
+I'm back home by lunchtime, and I've made myself a beef udon with sesame seeds. This is from the
+leftover _Limousin_ steak that I barbecued yesterday. It's very tasty and I slurp it down greedily.
+I've also gotten a few _B&uuml;rli_, which helps soak up the fluid in the tummy. Yummy!
+
+After lunch I have a play date with my buddy Rogier. For [[Coloclue](https://coloclue.net/)] we have
+volunteered to look into flowprobe and sflow for VPP, because it helps us figure out who is sending
+which traffic, where. I've dabbled with flowprobe before, but did not find success: dataplane
+crashes, and malformed Netflow packets. But, the kind folks at Netgate have sent quite a few code
+changes, and maybe it works better now.
+
+I'm eager to take a look. But alas, Rogier sends me a Signal message that he's handling some mildly
+annoying fire at work, and won't be able to join. I like hanging out with Rogier, so that's a bit of
+a bummer. But I will also be able to do at least _some_ of the work myself. This will once again
+become a larger story arc on the [[IPng](https://ipng.ch/)] website in the form of a few articles,
+but I do a sidequest first.
+
+{{< image frame="false" width="5em" float="left" src="/img/init/sidequest.png" alt="The SideQuest logo" >}}
+A while ago, I changed the wiring of my lab hypervisors, they are now all connected with 10G DAC to
+ports on the Mellanox 100G switch (that I wrote about
+[[here](https://ipng.ch/s/articles/2023/11/11/debian-on-mellanox-sn2700-32x100g/)]). But, in doing
+so, I disconnected them from the _Unifi_ homenetwork, so now they no longer have access to the
+`lab.ipng.ch` hypervisor. Also, it's been a few months since I booted them, so I go on a little side
+quest, bringing them up to Debian 12.6, and plumbing through a new set of LAB vlans from the
+`lab.ipng.ch` through the Centec switch, with 100G to the lab switch, and up into the LAB
+hypervisors. There are 7 machines currently: four are old Dell R720s, and three are newer Dell
+R730s. When I'm done, all of them have a private VLAN to the `lab.ipng.ch` head-end, and they all
+use 10G now for both iDRAC as well as IPng Site Local.
+
+{{< image frame="false" width="5em" float="left" src="/img/init/sidequest.png" alt="The SideQuest logo" >}}
+But once I'm on a this side quest, I also see that the VPP labs (which I wrote about
+[[here](https://ipng.ch/s/articles/2022/10/14/vpp-lab-setup/)]), are a bit out of date. So, off I go
+on a _second side quest_, to make both a new release of VPP 24.10-rc0 (including sflow but I would
+not use that quite yet!), for both Debian Bookworm as well as Debian Bullseye; and I'll also make a
+new lab VM while I'm at it, which contains also the [[hsflowd](https://github.com/sflow/host-sflow)]
+and [[sflowtool](https://github.com/sflow/sflowtool)], the Bird2 that can do transit-less OSPF, and
+the newest VPP code of course. I regenerate the environment on `lab0`, which is now also hooked up
+with 10G to the internet, and play around a little bit.
+
+In some sense, I do miss Rogier: had he been on a video call with me, I would've done what I
+actually set out to do, but now all of the sudden it's 17:30 and while I did a good job overall, I
+did literally _nothing_ on the sflow front :-) but before I head out for the day, I do boot up the
+lab and see the sflow plugin at work. It's sampling traffic, and the traffic it does sample looks
+correct at least! More on that later.
+
+I'm in a celebratory mood, and it is also Ap&eacute;ro-o'clock; so Marina and I go to the yard and
+crack open a bottle of _Maison Gillard_ called _La Parte de Novembre_ which is an ice wine, they
+say. Marina does quite like a sweeter white wine, and it's truly delectable. What's even more
+strange (to us, at least!) is that it's a **Swiss** wine. Could it be, that we finally found a nice
+white wine from Switzerland? Go Valais!
+
+I prepare dinner tonight - it's a simple one with fishsticks, mashed potatoes and spinach. Marina
+has what appears to be a mild brain malfunction as she tries to do the math how to divide the 10
+sticks we have left over, with the 15 sticks we got this week, in a way that allows us to buy
+another batch and divide it into two meals: 25 is waaay too much for one meal, and she ties her poor
+little noggin into a knot trying to work this out. I belly laugh at her maths skills. Poor girl. But
+after, like, four botched attempts, she figures it out. We're eating twenty. Also, and this is kind
+of unique because in our household we don't do exceptions to meals (Dutch: "je eet wat de pot schaft",
+English: "you eat what the pot has made"), she makes herself peas and carrots, because she thinks
+spinach is gross. But then again, she eats _Kramiek_, so I don't think her opinion particularly
+counts....
+
+It's Friday and thus: movie night, as none of us have a strict time to get up tomorrow morning.
+Yesterday, Marina and I watched _Hope Solo_, and that surname got me thinking: it's been a long
+while since we watched a starwars universe flic.
+[[Solo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solo:_A_Star_Wars_Story)], with Aiden Ehrenreich, Woody
+Harrelson, and Emilia Clarke (🥰) and Donald Glover. I've seen it before and remembered it as a
+really good 'Post StarWars IV, V, VI'. Marina didn't fall asleep, which means: she found it
+interesting also. IMDB scored it 6.9, and I think that's a fair one.
+
+OK, so tomorrow, then, maybe, I'll go do those functional and loadtests with `sflow` in VPP. For
+now, I'm bushed, and I did at least a few useful things in IPng's lab rack, as well as rescued a
+beautiful 100G wave to Frankfurt.
+
+## Pictures of the Day
+
+{{< gallery-category >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-06/IMG_1131.JPG" caption="The (loaner) Stromer bike en route from my house to the Interxion datacenter in Glattbrugg. I can't stop loving the views in scenic Zurich, and that I get to live here 🥰" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-06/IMG_1133.JPG" caption="A tasty bowl of Beef Udon with sesame seeds on top. Super delish lunch!" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-06/IMG_1134.JPG" caption="We drink a very nice - swiss - ice wine from Maison Gillard. This stuff is almost perfect to our palet!" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-06/IMG_1135.JPG" caption="A screenshot of Han 'I have no family: Solo' alongside Lando Calrissian and the love of his life, L3-37. I enjoyed the backstory of Han Solo and Chewbacca!" >}}
+{{< /gallery-category >}}
+
+{{< gallery-modal >}}
+{{< gallery-script >}}