Arista EOS Central - Author - Colin MacGiollaEain

Extending EVPN and VXLAN to the Host

Posted on April 13, 2021 by Colin MacGiollaEain | 2395 Views

Overview VxLAN provides a highly scalable, standards based approach for constructing L2 overlays on top of routed networks. It is defined in RFC7348, and encapsulates the original host Ethernet frame in a UDP + IP + Ethernet frame. BGP EVPN (RFC 7432 and RFC 8365 for its application to VXLAN) is a standards based control protocol to efficiently discover other endpoints (VTEPs) and distribute reachability information (MAC addresses). This post assumes the reader is already familiar with configuration and operations of EVPN and VXLAN for Arista. Goals The use case here is the extension of a L2 overlay south of the TOR/Leaf...
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Managing Containers on EOS – container-manager

Posted on March 24, 2021 by Colin MacGiollaEain | 1012 Views

Containers on EOS Container-based deployments make creating cloud portable applications extremely easy. An application can be written on normal build infrastructure, that in turn can be run on a EOS switch or any Linux device that runs docker run time engine. So the same applications that are ran on a server for microservices can be run on switch with Arista EOS. Since Arista extensible operating system is simply linux (CentOS at this time – 2021) we are able to integrate docker run time engine into the operating system. Containers give us the agility and control to run any application without...
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Reversing The Airflow of a Running Switch

Posted on November 9, 2017 by Colin MacGiollaEain | 5628 Views

Occasionally customers have a switch in production that they need to change the airflow direction of e.g. from a front-to-rear (-F) to a rear-to-front (-R), or vice-versa, without shutting down the switch. The following procedure outlines the steps to follow in order to accomplish this. This procedure assumes that you already have the replacement fans and PSUs on hand and are ready to perform the swap. Start with the switch powered up, both power supplies powered and providing power to the switch. Gain access to the switch’s serial console to check status and run CLI commands as need be. Add...
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Changing the switchport default mode

Posted on April 25, 2017 by Colin MacGiollaEain | 1917 Views

By default all ports on an Arista switch are configured to be switch ports, as you would expect. If you are mostly dealing with routed ports, this behaviour may not be totally desirable. Starting in EOS-4.18.0, this behaviour is configurable e.g. we can have all interfaces in routed mode by default. switch1...11:10:56(config)#show run int et 1-4interface Ethernet1interface Ethernet2interface Ethernet3interface Ethernet4switch1...11:11:00(config)#show interface Et1-4 switchport | i Name|Switchport:Name: Et1Switchport: EnabledName: Et2Switchport: EnabledName: Et3Switchport: EnabledName: Et4Switchport: Enabled To change the default, simply issue the configuration command switchport default mode routed As you can see, all interfaces are now in routed mode by default:...
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Understanding EOS Software Download Options

Posted on September 13, 2016 by Colin MacGiollaEain | 16497 Views

This post is to help explain the different Software Download options for a particular EOS release. For recommendations on which train or version of EOS you should use, please take a look at our Software Lifecycle, and Recommended Release pages. This advice only concerns images located in the Active and Support Only Releases folder. Images from the Other Releases and EFT folders are not for general use. Those releases are available only for specific deployments, and should only be used when specifically recommended by Arista. In this case, I’m taking a look at EOS-4.17.1F and you can see from the...
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Introduction to Managing EOS Devices – Memory Utilisation

Posted on May 20, 2016 by Colin MacGiollaEain | 12155 Views

A common question that users new to EOS have is concerning the high levels of memory utilisation seen on Arista switches (~70% utilised). Typically this is first flagged by the NMS and triggers a low memory warning or alarm. Unlike a traditional switching OS, EOS uses Linux page caching. Most free memory is used as a live cache and very low ‘free memory’ numbers are entirely normal, providing that enough memory is available from the buffers and cached memory for applications demanding more RAM. In this case, the OS is capable of freeing up memory from cache as processes demand it. Memory...
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Author : Colin MacGiollaEain