Null Zero Long Form Video Content 🎬
In this is post
🎬 EVPN-VXLAN Explainer - now on youtube.
📔 An update on what I've been up to, lots of EVPN.
🦀 MY other project - learning Rust
EVPN-VXLAN Explainer 1
My recent EVPN Explainer posts were essentially preparation for a video series, covering roughly the same content.
With the large amount of detail required, and as I refined my messaging, I felt that a blog was a better medium to use at first. Videos are much harder to edit and correct any mistakes. Thus I wanted to try out my content in writing, then move on to creating the videos.
After a couple of weeks preparing and recording, along with my main job, I'm happy to say that I've released the first video, and here it is:
This video is a gentle introduction to EVPN, focusing on the high-level operation and configuration, rather than going to deep. With the basics out of the way, I'll be going into the details, much like my blog posts, in later videos.
A Brief Update AKA What I've been up to
As the long, hot summer of 2022 draws to a close, I've put away the flip-flops and dived straight back into my job working as a Strategist for Aruba Networks.
Recently, I've been running, or supporting, a number of customer demos revolving around EVPN. Usually my role in the team predominately entails going deep into VXLAN and EVPN, maybe in only a 30-45 mins slot.
Under such time constraints, the amount of information I can impart without losing the audience is somewhat limited. I tend to opt for the high-level process, 'EVPN being an extension of BGP that advertises MAC addresses rather than IP prefixes', that sort of thing. With lots of slides and maybe even a demo of my own.
While feedback is generally positive, it is hard to guage how much the audience is able to absorb. But what I do know for certain is that there is alot of interest for EVPN-VXLAN. It definitely feels like a 'hot topic' that audiences are requesting more info on. In fact, I've got a couple of speaking engagements at Aruba Airhead events coming up in the next couple of months, the requested topic is EVPN, of course!
My other project, learning Rust 🦀
In the early days of this current wave of interest in network automation, around 2014, I jumped on the bandwagon and taught myself Python.
It being my first programming language, it took me a few failed attempts, but I finally got to the point where I was happily writing code and know my classes from my decorators.
Python being a high-level language, I decided to challenge myself and try something more taxing. This was around 2019 and I picked up on a buzz of excitement around the relatively new language, that being Rust. I henceforth set myself the goal of learning my second language.
Just like with Python, I had a few failed attempts at getting to grips this new way of programming. Life, the pandemic, and its drawn out aftermath seemed to conspire against me, compounded but the fact that rust is well-known for having a rather steep learning curve.
Recently though, I feel like I'm starting to make some progress, and have set myself the challenge of writing any automation projects in Rust. I'm currently in the process of converting my trusty Aruba Central API client code from Python to Rust, and will be publishing that soon.
But for now, here's a couple of basic examples:
That's it for now, more content coming soon.