Identify Cisco equipment

- As a tech in the field, it's important for you to be able to identify certain types of Cisco equipment. - [Announcer] You are watching ITPro TV. (techno music) - Hello, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning into more of the Cisco CCT. That's right, we're talking hardware here and I'm, I'm a hardware guy so this is going to be a fun episode. We're identifying Cisco equipment. Ronnie, what are some of the goals for this? - Now the goal for what we're actually trying to do is to realize that as a CCT, we're going to encounter more than just what we think. - Okay. - So we need to at least be familiar with some of the different models and even some of the functionality of those models and how we're actually going to be working with them at times. But overall though, we want to make sure that we at least can say, "Hey, here's how I know that this is going to be what would I need in place." Now essentially, Wes, when it comes down to what we're actually talking about here, not only for that for a goal, but also of course for the CCT exam as well, they do tend to ask about these things. And Wes, this is kind of the one that's a little bit more unusual. Unless you've actually taken like a Cisco certified sales exam, you're probably going to say, "Why the heck do I need to know that?" Well for the CCT, there's a few different things that we need to make sure that you point out. And the reason why is that if you're actually going to be in the field and you're going to be recommending a replacement means you know what these models are going to be like. - All right, Ronnie, this much I do know about Cisco is that they've kind of revolutionized networking equipment and they've been around for a long time. So they have a plethora of equipment out there. Where do we get started? - All right, so let's go ahead and stick with the list that we normally find inside of the actual exam objectives that we'd find on the Cisco website. And it's not that there wasn't more equipment out there, but when it comes down to it, we're going to be talking about Nexus switches, we're going to be talk about some of the other ones here. But let's start off with the idea of the Cisco Nexus types of switches here. Okay? So when it comes down to Cisco Nexus switches, you'll see 9000 series, you'll see 7000 series and you'll also see 3000 series models here, okay? Is what you'll actually see. Now these are going to be the high end switches that you'll normally actually end up seeing now. Usually, for someone like a CCT, we're not going to be encountering a lot of the bigger pieces of equipment like this. This one, Wes, would give us a hernia and we were to try and pick this stuff up. Now even though you actually can remove everything, 'cause it talks about the idea of a modular chassis here, even the chassis itself without anything in it. Now you actually put the power supplies in in the back here, I think is where this one goes. You put all that in, it's going to be super heavy. - That looks like nine 48-port blades in that one, let alone the fact that it's modular and you can add more. - Yeah, there's a lot in each of those different blades that you actually do end up seeing. This photograph here is not the best photograph that you end up seeing, but each one of those, you can actually pull out and actually plug something back in to make it actually switch the capacities. And that's what you see right here. We can be one gig, 10 gig, 40 gigs and 100-gig ethernet ports as we need them on each one of these if we choose to. So that's actually up to you. And then there's what we call supervisor modules that essentially our controllers for the whole thing and how that actually ends up working. But the key for us here is that it actually runs the idea of the Cisco NX-OS, which is going to be the Nexus operating system is what we're talking about here. And we'll actually have a whole episode where we're going to compare and contrast the idea of what this operating system is a little bit like. We're not going to go super deep into it, but we do want to talk about that, but we'll talk about it in different episode. Now on Nexus, series you'll see that it's designed for using the Cisco ACI and this is all about network programmability. So a lot of this stuff that you see in the 9000 series, that's what this one is really kind of coming down to. And you'll see it actually kind of says that again, the Cisco ACI Spine means that this can also be implemented in a spine leaf topology. And if you're wondering like, "Oh, Ronnie, you're now talking about different things I know nothing about in terms of network design." That's right, and that means if you want to go further and actually understand this deeper. You're probably going to end up looking into the ITPro TV courses there. When you do, you're going to check out more of these different things in terms of like the CCNA as well as the CCNP level stuff that will actually allow you to see that. So check out those particular shows as you want to go on through. Notice this, we even have 40 gig types of switches here and these are the modules that actually fit into that chassis that we talked about. And you can go on and there's 9300 series and they all support like 40 and 100 gigs here. And that seems to kind of be what we're actually ending up seeing is about all the way from one gig all the way up to about 100 gig ports. So Wes, imagine having 100 gig switch ports on your network. It's pretty darn hefty. - I can imagine that's a pretty expensive price per port, especially when you talk about high port density. - Yeah, this is not exactly cheap stuff here, but realize this is probably what you'll normally end up seeing like in data centers as well. Now of course, there are even larger ones out here that you'll also end up seeing. So the Cisco 7000 series, okay? Now you might be one like, "Wait, 9000 isn't better than the 7000 series?" Well, remember each one that has its context and where you would actually end up placing these. Now the neat thing about this particular one, right? The 7000 series is check this third bullet point out here, Wes. Up to 192 40-gig ports if we want to and 32 100-gig ports. - I'm noticing that's terabytes worth of bandwidth. So I'm thinking ISPs, major backbone type stuff like that. - Yeah. Yeah. And it also has redundant supervisor modules as well and that means if one supervisor module goes down, then the other one can pick up. And so this is kind of that series and this one over here on the Cisco 7700, check this out west up to 480 40-gig ports and another 480. - Well they say go bigger, go home. - Yeah. So I just kind of realize that this is stuff that you normally would see in those contexts and environments. Now the one that I'm going to really emphasize here, okay? Is going to be this Nexus 3000 series. And that's because if you're working inside of a data center, okay? You also have what we call of course, top of rack switches. Make sure you know that term top of rack switches. But this 3000 is a very popular series and the reason for this is actually kind of also the bandwidth issue. - One of the things I've noticed right away about this one, Ronnie, we did something on an episode on the models, right? And you mentioned that, "Hey, unless you have a layer three switch and we're seeing that capability here,." So not only does it understand the basic ethernet and land-based technologies but also understands IP. - Right. - Interesting. - So this one actually is designed to be able to do that for your data centers, which you do have a whole rack of course of different equipment and this one would be at the top of the rack and so that's what we see here. - [Wes] Nice. - Now Wes, this is the first time though. Okay, so 9000 didn't have, we kind of saw those models. 7000 didn't have this. And you're probably starting like, "Are you joking me?" Look at this 3400 series here and notice now what we're actually seeing here. - [Wes] 400 gigs, wow. - 400 gigs in the Nexus 3000 series. So this one again is actually going to be super high bandwidth. Now we did talk about this before when we talked about the idea of the transceiver modules a little bit when we mentioned that hey, there are some transceivers that actually can handle something like this as well. So just kind of realize when you start doing that. - Calling back to what we were talking about there, I think this is going to be one of those quad SFP pluses, right? - Yeah. - Yeah. - Or multitudes. - Yeah. It might actually be the QSFP 28 even. - Oh okay, higher than that. - So it is very possible that you might see that. Now the other series, again, we're not going over each and every single one on the earlier ones I did, but you kind of see that what we're getting at, so here we have layer two and layer three switches, that kind of ends the idea of our Nexus series of what we're doing. Now it doesn't mean that there's not other types of switches for other environments. If you are actually working in a SAN environment, right? Storage area network, you're going to see that the name begins to change. And what you see here is what they call the MDS and I can't remember exactly, it's multi-distribution something. Switch or something like that. So you actually see right here, this MDS here, it is another series and these 9000 series is what you're actually getting at. And these of course, can go across the idea of fabric switches once again working inside of that SAN environment. And they even of course have, well even SAN management here too. So you name it, this is more inside that area of storage area networks is where you'll see this MDS type of switch for you. So if you do have large gigantic SAN networks, that's what you're actually going to be paying attention to. All right. Now those are kind of really specialty types of equipment that we're seeing. Now, this is probably the more common stuff that we're getting into. You'll probably see the idea of Cisco catalyst switches is what you'll see, and there's 9000 series. There are 6800 series. And on this one I was looking our 6500 series E. 3650s, this is a little bit older, what I actually had here. Now I'm actually just trying to list kind of the ones that we normally are going to end up seeing when they call it out on the exam. You're not going to get all of these, of course. You might get some of them, but just kind of realize that you need to at least be familiar with this. Now, the key term here in terms of the Catalyst 9000 is well, right here, intent-based networking. Okay? So this is designed to help us to bring this about in terms of the idea of intent-based networking. And that is that really that the network follows whatever the business needs rather than the business existing for the network. Now that sounds a little bit strange, but overall though, the whole goal and the whole idea behind this is that this is kind of, you know, the middle series of things that we actually need. So we're not specialty inside of the entire data center itself and the connections that we need. We're not actually talking about top of rack anymore. Now we're actually in kind of what we would normally see in a regular business as well as doing clouds. You name it, they're all right here too. So we're not focusing in anymore on so much of the bandwidth because we see bandwidth can of course, cost different things that are also out there. Now the 6800, this is now where you actually start seeing terms in terms of design core and distribution switches. So remember the core switches are the high speed networks that we have that really connect like our regular LAN traffic. Also of course, into our data center networks. Distribution switches help us to aggregate that traffic from our access layer into what we also need here. So you might see that in the Catalyst 6800 series and you'll see I'm kind of going a little bit faster 'cause I don't think that we're probably going to get too much on this and you might not see a lot of this in that series as well. And on the 65 series here, 65 E series. This one actually has, let me make sure I am telling you correctly here. Yeah, this one is about scalability, okay? So this is designed to grow with your network as you need to. Very highly modular in terms of what they actually need. And it's designed to actually do a whole bunch of different things as well. The 3650, now on these, this one has been around for a while. Okay? These are actually some of my favorite switches. I actually even like the older series, which is 3560 switches here. When you start taking a look across all of these, okay? And you start seeing something here, you'll notice that here's where you might get what we call POE switches as well. So POE types of switches, we normally don't see those inside of the data center switches. We normally don't take a look at those inside of the top of rack switches too much. Where we're normally seeing those as the ones that power, you know, your IP phones. I was trying to think of a device that actually needed a POE of you know, your webcam, not webcams- - [Wes] Cams and stuff like that, access points. - Yeah, those types of cams. Yeah, access points, stuff like that. So that's what we tend to see in something like this one. That is a nice distinguishing feature. Now there is a product that is called out by Cisco and if you're saying Meraki, why? Why the heck Meraki? Well because they bought Meraki several years ago and they just kind of threw this one in. It works like what we've already seen here. It does provide the same types of things that we've been talking about, but just kind of realize Meraki also has a series of switches out there. The whole idea behind this of course, is if you need cloud managed switching. Cloud managed switching, you're going to go with Meraki. Hopefully that makes sense. All right, now, we need to talk about routers a little bit more. Okay? So the new class of routing for the next decade is the Cisco 8000 and they actually have the latest in their advancement in terms of what they call ASICs here. Remember that ASICs essentially is what allows us to not have to send everything into the CPU, but it can do the processing on the port itself. Is hardware enabling us to be able to do this? So realize that these series of switches tend to do that and with the latest types of equipment. And here's something you'll actually be able to see, and I like this particular slide or this website here 'cause Wes, this is where you can actually start to find a couple of things and it starts to make a little bit sense here. So Wes, notice this last number here. Okay, one. This one here, two, this one here, eight. And you're like, "Like why the heck are they?" You know, it's not like two, four, six, eight, or anything, right? - One of the things I noticed right away when you said that is if we look all the way down at the bottom specification and the height- - There you go. - The height then relative to the rack unit size, - Right. - Interesting. - That's exactly what you're starting to see is some of that stuff. You're actually not only seeing that, but just kind of realize that you might actually be able to start discerning just a little bit of the physical characteristics of something like a router by taking a look at something like this. - Now if I can understand that right there, Ronnie, when they, they say something like eight slots, they're saying eight rack unit slots. Is that what they're meaning there? - Well close. But if you actually note what they actually say here. - Okay, 16 are you 16? - 16 rack units. - Gotcha. Okay, sure. - Yeah, and notice this one with 12 slots, it's actually 21 rack units as well. - Is that how many modular blades you can put in it? Is that what that means? - Yup. Well it actually is the height of what that actually is going to be. - Okay, gotcha. - The whole height of what you're actually seeing here. So some of them at the beginning here, they do actually specify the exact rack mountain unit and that's because everything is integrated here. Once you start getting to these, this is where you get what we call line cards too. Remember, that line cards are what we actually place into the chassis itself to help us to do what we need to to increase functionality. This goes all the way up to 18 slots, 33U, which is pretty much an entire rack itself. It is pretty hefty in terms of the sizes as you start seeing it. That 8000 series is also another one. And this one right here, they also of course, have aggregation services is at the distribution layer, the Cisco 1000 series. This is also good when you start dealing with the idea of cloud environments as well. The SR1000s, two are kind of hefty in the way that they have everything. We're not going to get so much into that one. And this is kind of a tough one here. This is a new one, the Nexus Convergence System. Hmm, okay. And this is designed that says cloud scale for WAN aggregation here. This does everything okay. That there is to actually be able to do, but it's doing it at high speeds. Normally, where we're going to find this? Side of ISPs is what we're actually going to see. All right? The ISR, this is probably more of the small to medium business market, okay? Is what we're seeing. Integrated services router allow us to do everything. Notice it says provides routing, security, hosting, switching, you name it all in a single trustworthy platform. That's what you also have. Of course, they go ahead and they market it that way. So just realize you might see that. This is going into the smaller end. This is more branch office, whereas the other one's probably more of your regular business office meet small to medium business. You see this actually becomes very small at this point. And then of course, if you go on 900, even smaller, okay? This is tiny by comparison. This one doesn't look like, actually, I think this one does have. It actually does have wireless service actually built into it. Just when you think the 900 does not small enough, they have an 800 series. So small but mighty, you know, is what they actually say. Usually, this one, everything is actually built in. I don't know 'cause I've never worked with an 800 series here. Okay? I don't know if you actually even have console access anymore. I think this one might just be web managed at this point. So just kind of realize that you might see something like that. But overall though, that's pretty much kind of the key on a lot of the devices that you'll see. Make sure you pay attention, especially when getting ready for the exam, the capabilities. And when I mean that take a look, especially at the idea of the bandwidth, if I emphasize bandwidth is because of a reason and emphasize bandwidth on a lot of them because you just need to know about those capabilities overall. But just kind of realize that you know, hey, this is something that you do need to at least pay attention to. But overall though, there's a lot of different pieces of equipment that you may actually encounter. All right, now Wes, we need to, at least at the very last couple of minutes here that we have, we need to see where in the world can we find some of this information on our switch? So Wes, I'm going to actually get you to console into a switch, but for me to do that I've got to switch my particular laptop so that Wes can connect to it. So just give me a brief break and we'll be right back. - All right, Ronnie, we're connected to the switch. We got putty open, we're connected to the console, I would say. Where do we start? - All right, so what we want to do is we want to realize something that of course, we can take a look at this on like the hardware itself and we'll point those things out on the face plate as well as we might see some different numbers that we need to be sure of here. But when we're inside of the console here, let's go ahead and type in enable. And that should bring us into our privilege mode here. And once we're in here, let's go ahead and type in show inventory. - Okay. - And you can just do inv, oops. Oh yeah, yeah. And then hit the tab. - Let's try inventory there. - There we go. - And press. - If you spell it right. - Yeah, now here's what we're seeing. Notice the PID, that's the product ID number and we can see right from there that WS here of course, is working switch or something like that. A workstation switch, I don't know exactly what it stands for. the C3750G, even though that's not in the list of things that we're talking about, but you can always tell the platform, okay? That's what- - Okay. - It might actually stand for Platform ID for all I know. - Okay. - You also see some other specifications here. That 48TS, that's going to be 48 ports for us. The team might stand for twisted pair there and then the switch. And then there's actually some other letters there. I don't remember what those, but overall though, just kind of realize that you can find some hardware information. The other number that's going to be very important as a CCT is going to be the SN number, which is the serial number. And the reason why we actually need to know that is if we ever have to return something, we need to get parts for this thing, we probably will need a number like that when we contact Cisco. Now let's get a little bit more detail on something like that. So let's type in show version. And when we hit the enter here and just go ahead and hit your space bar. And I always forget that. And it's right here that you're starting to see, go ahead and hit your space bar one more time and now let's scroll back up just a little bit. So right here, you do see a list of different devices and see every single one of them has like a assembly number. What you're normally looking for, especially on replacement parts is going to be serial number. Notice there's motherboard, serial number, power supply, serial number down towards yeah, the system serial number. That should be the same thing as what we also saw in the show inventory as well, okay? The other thing that you might also have is that base ethernet MAC address. If they happen to need that or you happen to need that, that's where you actually end up finding it for, you know, one purpose or another. Now on our switch, there's actually three little stickers that are on there and we're going to actually use a different switch for this 'cause the one that I'm using, I don't know where the stickers are, I must have rubbed them off or whoever had it last, I had them rubbed off. But we'll actually show you that normally, you actually see these of course in a sticker format on the devices too. And they'll even show you that other stuff. That's really going to be helpful as you go back through and you need to identify some of these different components, but especially on the model numbers and stuff like that, and even some of the capacities, I should be able to do something like this directly on those as well. So Wes, that should actually kind of wrap it up for us in this series. We saw a lot of different pieces of equipment, but overall though, when you actually think about it, it's not exactly difficult, but there is a lot that you're probably going to encounter in the field. - All right, ladies and gentlemen, remember the key takeaways here. Be able to identify those Cisco equipment types, some of the base specifications, and also how to get that information from your switch like Ronnie just showed you. Thanks for watching. We got a lot more exciting content coming up in the CCT. - [Narrator] Thank you for watching ITPro TV. (techno music)