Erica Cooper: 0:00

It's a lot different on the government side. They don't really have any room for that type of outage, if that makes sense.

Tim McConnaughy: 0:07

Oh, of course, I mean obviously nobody really has room for it.

Erica Cooper: 0:10

Yeah, but it's a little bit different because when you, it could be a challenge from a national security perspective.

Tim McConnaughy: 0:18

So right, Welcome to the Cables to Clouds podcast, your one-stop shop for all things hybrid and multi-cloud networking. Now here are your hosts.

Alex Perkins: 0:28

Tim, chris and Alex.

Tim McConnaughy: 0:31

Hello and welcome back to the Cables to Clouds podcast. I'm your host this week, tim McConaughey at JuanGolbez on Twitter. With me, as always, are my co-hosts Chris Miles at BGP Main on Twitter and Alex Perkins at Bumps in the Wire on Twitter.

Chris Miles: 0:50

The joke that never ends.

Tim McConnaughy: 0:52

Right. It always pays off, just like our fortnightly news. Right With us is a very special guest, a good friend of mine. I'm glad to finally get her on the show, erica Cooper. She works for Cisco and tonight we're going to be talking about GovCloud, specifically what GovCloud is, and of course, erica has a lot of customers that work in the GovCloud space, so we thought it'd be great to have her on. Erica, if you would please just go ahead and introduce yourself.

Erica Cooper: 1:19

Sure, thank you very much, tim and everyone. Chris and Alex Appreciate the opportunity to kind of join the session today. So my name is Erica Cooper and I've been working with cloud solutions for roughly about six years now. My background is data center and then also virtualization and I've started out on the Cisco side and then kind of migrated into more of the cloud based solutions, cloud based opportunities. Because of my background and where I actually most of my customers sit, which is in the Washington DC area Most of my customers actually government based as well as intelligence community based.

Tim McConnaughy: 2:14

Awesome. So I guess we should probably just start with the obvious question, since we haven't really covered it on the show yet. We've talked about GovCloud and just said the word GovCloud and kind of skimmed over it, just assumed everybody knew what that was and everything. But actually I'd like to take this opportunity, especially now that we have you to talk about. First of all, what is GovCloud? Obviously, the intended audience is government to some degree, although I'm kind of curious to what level of government is interested in GovCloud or needs to be in GovCloud, and to what level of government is interested in GovCloud or needs to be in GovCloud. And then we can kind of go from there if that works for you.

Erica Cooper: 2:49

Sure. So just a high-level overview for GovCloud. Govcloud, it offers the government an opportunity to place different applications that used to be kind of like what I would call sneaker net. You know, just, you have physical equipment on prem and so they moved a lot of their solutions to the, to the clouds, to the cloud environment.

Erica Cooper: 3:13

Now, what I will say is, within GovCloud that I have experience on is mostly Azure. So why Azure? Azure is, you know, with the government. They have a point of presence, a large point of presence with Azure, more specifically than AWS, from what I've seen on the projects that I've actually worked with. Now, why do you save Azure? Well, most government entities also have Office 365. So what's the best way to kind of introduce you into some type of cloud based solution would be that Office 365 in there. The next iteration would be Azure, azure on prem and then, ok, well, now we offer also some type of hybrid solution, whether it's Azure Hub and I'll go into that a little bit later but Azure Hub versus HCI. So it just kind of just depends upon. You know the customer and you know what their requirements are.

Erica Cooper: 4:09

What I will say one of the unique challenges within the government space is that what you see in the public facing cloud cannot go into a GovCloud scenario, because there are specific things that that only need to be, that only need to, I guess, reside within a secured environment. You know. So it's like if you access it, you specifically have to be in that enclave for that customer, for that specific customer. So it's it's not the traditional cloud. You know solution is going to be like a good mix of infrastructure and then what I would call like a like Tim, like a Chris, like a nailed up tunnel between your on prem environment and then anything that any resources that I need to access when they within the cloud environment. So it's kind of. It's kind of like that environment. So I hope that explains it to your, to the listeners here.

Chris Miles: 5:01

Yeah, definitely, and this and this. This may be a silly question to the listeners here. Yeah, definitely, and this may be a silly question. I haven't worked with GovCloud in any CSP that much up to this point, but is GovCloud specifically only targeted at the US government, or is it any kind of global perspective?

Erica Cooper: 5:20

Global perspective. It could be, but now I have more experience on the deployments for US based CONUS. But I have seen some customers that are international and one of the unique challenges would be they would still have to depend upon the agency. They still would have to have some point of presence communicating back here stateside, have some point of presence communicating back here stateside. So it's just a matter of setting that up international, getting all the requirements. The IP addressing scheme is a little different still IPv4. Most customers have not gone into IPv6 just yet, but you know it's just been more IPv4 and then, you know, having that communication link back to some point of presence here stateside in the United States.

Erica Cooper: 6:06

One of the things that I will say is that when you're looking at the cloud based solution, especially on the on the government side, it's going to be. I'll give you an example, one of my customers. They migrated from a what I call a physical host, you know Dell servers over into like a virtualized environment, vmware, and then they put that entire application. It took them some years to get that application to be what I call cloud ready. So they put, they moved all of their resources compute into the cloud and then at that point, then we had to come up with. Come up with a solution to offer for their customers at Persona.

Alex Perkins: 6:50

I just want to call this out before we go too far, because everybody keeps saying GovCloud. This is just ironic to me. Aws calls their solution GovCloud and we're talking about how Azure is like the what you see the most. I also have some customers that work on the government cloud space and I think I probably see about a 50-50 mix between GovCloud and MAG or, I think, called Microsoft Azure for government. Yeah, that's right. I just thought it was funny that we're saying GovCloud. I mean, whether we like it or not AWS.

Tim McConnaughy: 7:20

Terminology tends to be the most ubiquitous.

Erica Cooper: 7:22

That everybody just kind of uses and knows.

Tim McConnaughy: 7:25

I want to go back a little bit, because so Alex and I worked on the NMCI, the Navy Marine Corps Internet. So when you said CONUS, so let's be clear for our listeners. By the way, conus means continental US, so there's continental US and there's OCONUS, which is outside the continental US. So my question was going to be for government entities. Obviously they have an OCONUS presence outside. I'm not saying this specifically, but since I worked for the Navy, the Navy obviously has a huge presence outside the continental US. Do you see it differently and I don't want to get too specific obviously because we have OPSEC to consider but do you see it where, whatever the enclave that is, is coming back to CONUS and then into MAG or the Microsoft Azure for Government, or do they tend to wherever they're at, they just find the closest Microsoft Azure? The reason I ask this is because I don't know how prolific and proliferated Microsoft Azure this is because the reason I ask this is because I don't know how prolific and proliferated Microsoft Azure for government is across the globe.

Erica Cooper: 8:30

Right, yeah, so they normally. So most of my customers that have been OCONUS have actually come to. They actually have their specific connection back into. It's like a direct connection back into Azure Cloud. Now, one thing that is a unique challenge is if you sit here stateside, then at that point in time you need to figure out, when you make the design, you know what resources are going to be available for traffic coming ingress into that Azure environment. So I will say this much it is a lot of from from my perspective and looking at things differently, it's a lot of making sure that you have everything in place for security, because when you're dealing with the government, everything ramps up. You see that CrowdStrike challenge that Microsoft has been dealing with the last few days. It's a lot different. On the government side they don't really have any room for that type of outage, if that makes sense.

Tim McConnaughy: 9:30

Oh, of course, I mean obviously nobody really has room for it.

Erica Cooper: 9:33

Yeah, but it's a little bit different because when you, it could be a challenge from a national security perspective.

Tim McConnaughy: 9:41

I get it.

Erica Cooper: 9:42

Yeah. So it's like we can't. Oh well, you're gonna be down for a few hours or we're gonna push this patch. Yeah, no, that's not gonna happen. Everything is is thoroughly vetted, and then you go through a process and then you they vet it again and they say, okay, now we can push it. By the time you know they push the patch out, you know if something else has come up, you know another patch has come up. So it's just going to be a lot of betting and making sure that everything is all. Your I's are dotted and T's crossed.

Tim McConnaughy: 10:09

Yeah, absolutely what I wanted to go for, because I feel like we talked about GovCloud, but let's talk about it in terms of versus public cloud. For example, you mentioned that for GovCloud, they have a specific thing where only certain enclaves can get into a certain gear. Is it that segmented? Because I know Microsoft runs those data centers right, they're all discrete data centers, just like AWS and everything. Because I know Microsoft runs those data centers right, they're all discrete data centers, just like AWS and everything. So within that discrete data center, that Enclave A is running their cloud workload, is it to that level where we've labeled the rack and that the people who are cleared for that enclave can go into that rack? Is that Microsoft doesn't have their own people doing that?

Erica Cooper: 10:49

Okay, no, and so I've been doing the deployments for Azure, azure Stack, azure Stack, hub, and now coming up on HCI, you have to be cleared. And so Microsoft, they own the contract, own the opportunity. However, they don't go out and actually do the physical deployments in the work. When I've done some deployments for Cisco, it's written in the contract that you have to have what we call AS or advanced services to come in and say okay, we're not going to do the rack and stack, that's on the customer, the cabling, but we would have to actually send the cable equipment list cell out to the customer, like connect this to here, and then at that point we'll come on site due to deployment. It would take a long time because it's actually, you know, putting a lot of different PowerShell scripts, you know pushing a lot of.

Erica Cooper: 11:48

JSON yeah. So it's a lot of scripts that you have to create and sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. You know, it's just kind of like okay, you know. Then you got to start troubleshooting what kind of blew up versus what didn't.

Erica Cooper: 12:03

The other challenge comes into play is that if there's anything northbound, like a firewall, then you got to make sure that all the rules are set up so that it allows traffic ingress into that enclave. So you can't no one can just go in there arbitrarily and walk in and say, hey, I want to move this to this. No, it's not, and most of the time it's going to be in what we call a SCIF or secured environment. And then you know you have to be cleared. You know meaning like security clearance. You know vet it and then depend upon your classification of your clearance. Then at that point you would go and have either keyboard access or you can shoulder surf and say, ok, make these changes here. No, back that out, let's change. You know something like that. So it just depends upon who's cleared and who's not and what level of accessibility is required.

Erica Cooper: 12:57

The other thing that I want to point out is that I have never been on site where the Microsoft engineers have done any, and so it's no, no slight towards them. They just know their role, you know. They know, hey, you guys get this up and running, we'll come up and register it and then we'll help the customer, along with you guys, to build out the workloads and resources. And then it's kind of, after we get it up and running, then it's that joint collaborative effort from all different parties and it's more of the focus at that point will be on the customer. And, hey, what do you want your dashboard to look like? What do you want your? You know how do you want to specifically set this up? So it's kind of like a. I would say it's almost like a two-phase approach. You come in and you build out the infrastructure and then at that point, after you build out the infrastructure, then we sit down at the table with the Microsoft team and the customer and figure out what they want to do.

Alex Perkins: 13:49

Yeah, and trying to get like escorts lined up properly if you need escorts in the places, and oh my gosh it's a mess. If anyone has ever dealt with that stuff, it is very painful to try to do.

Erica Cooper: 14:02

Yeah, it's a mess.

Chris Miles: 14:04

Yeah, I think that's a great point. And, calling back to what you said about the vetting that needs to take place for these systems that are running within Cloud for Government, I'm sure that same vetting process also has to happen for the kind of CSP native services that they're running right, including things like load balancers and, you know, virtual machines, what have you? So, from speaking from that perspective, do you ever see any constraints with, like feature parity, like it, like the, some new feature come out that enable something within I don't know, like maybe vwan or gateway load balancer or something like that, that doesn't actually make it to gov cloud for, or so I shouldn't say gov cloud, cloud for government? Uh, does it make it to cloud for government within a certain length of time? Is that, is that a constant constraint for you?

Erica Cooper: 14:52

yes, and so one of the things that so Microsoft when they actually say, okay, this baseline feature is available and you can go. And so, for example, I've done a deployment where, and it was a nightmare, and so as soon as we finished up the deployment, microsoft had released a new baseline, and so I had to go back and undo everything we just did for five different sites and I had to spend an extra two weeks out on site to get that up and running.

Erica Cooper: 15:21

So what? I wanted to answer your question directly. When Microsoft sends out their baseline release, they'll tell you specifically here's all the codes that are available for your load balancers. Here's all the code specific for your on know, like your on-premise compute, on-premise switches, everything. So you have to adhere to that, even if they come out with a new release in the middle of your install. You got to go back and undo all that and get it up to code, and so it is a challenge.

Erica Cooper: 15:50

It is a challenge because if they don't do that, then the customer has the right and it's in the contract to say I'm not accepting this site. And then at that point it's like either you know a military term, go pound sand or just get it done.

Chris Miles: 16:03

So, if I'm understanding that correctly, are you saying that the services within you know obviously we're talking about Azure in this specific example? Are you saying the services within Azure allow for configuration still outside of the recommended baseline and you have to make sure that you're adhering to that? Is that what I'm understanding?

Erica Cooper: 16:21

So whatever the baseline comes in, so like let's say it's release 22 or something like that, or 2208 or 2408 for the year If they come out with 2409 in the middle of that I have, I would have to go back and say okay, we're gonna have to scrap this and start this whole thing over, because that's what I had to do last year for the five sites I had to deploy out for the us navy, because it was just in the the day that we had the final deployment. I was like, okay, we're getting ready, you know we're done. And then, like three hours later, the account manager from microsoft hey, you're gonna hate me, but I gotta.

Alex Perkins: 16:58

You know we got this new baseline release and I was like are you serious?

Erica Cooper: 17:01

I'm ready to go home. I've been on site all week, so I we had to stop everything, uh, and just completely do a flat out erase of all five sites.

Tim McConnaughy: 17:12

We set them up in a kind of like assembly line, so so the code that they release that we're talking about is I mean, we know that Microsoft uses a lot of white box stuff, or or or white white label stuff really within you know it's Arista, it's Juniper, it's Cisco, whatever they could get their hands on really in in the racks, right. So is that what we're talking about? Like you're, you're building this, this on, you're building this for an enclave, you have to run this code that microsoft's essentially the, to interact and become part of the cloud, right and so. And then they release a new version of that software, so you have to go load it all up on your on, on all the gear that you've deployed to this rack, is that?

Erica Cooper: 17:49

yeah, that is correct. Yeah, and so what'll happen is if there's um, you know, associated, you know like peripheral features, like for load balancers or anything else, we would have to go back and get that same image that coincides with that specific baseline release. Because if you release, if you deploy out, let's say again, for you know, version 2408 and 2409 is there, version 2408 and 2409 is there. Well, if I upgrade the whole environment for 2409 and the low balancer is sitting at here, it's a recipe for disaster. We tried that once.

Erica Cooper: 18:24

I was like well, you know how come I just can't do an upgrade on this entire solution. It's simple, you know we should just do an upgrade. Yeah, no, that doesn't work as well as you think it's going to work. You know, because I've seen that just implode, the firmware looks like it's updating. You kind of leave it in and just say, okay, we're going to go back, get some lunch, go back and go home to the hotel, get some food and then come back in the morning. It's still sitting there where you left it at the night before.

Tim McConnaughy: 18:51

Yeah, so it's just like yeah. And I guess it has. I mean it has to be upgraded right, like because the whole thing is, it's all about Microsoft's automation engine that's bringing it, making it part of the cloud, right, so you can't just run it a revision back or something right, it has to match everything, right, exactly.

Erica Cooper: 19:09

But you know it's a challenge, you know it's just you learn. I'll say this much I really had to get out of the mindset of you know like, uh, python scripting and everything else, and really dive deep into powershell because, oh yeah, you know, python doesn't exist in the microsoft world at least everything's powershell.

Tim McConnaughy: 19:28

Yeah, absolutely yeah, so how do you, how do you like powershell? So I had to take fire. The reason I ask is I had to take a PowerShell class as part of my cloud computing degree. I mean, it was okay, right, it was fine, and part of that class was actually building a whole PowerShell script to load a database and insert users in the database and everything. I was like, yeah, it's okay. But I'll be honest, I much preferred Python. So I'm curious, I always ask everybody else's opinion.

Erica Cooper: 19:55

Okay, I'll say this much I don't like it as as it's not as clean as I would say like Python or something or a different language. It is very challenging because but the good thing about PowerShell is that you can Google something and say, okay, have you seen this? And then it's like yep, I saw this, and some and somebody on wherever on some blog site's like, yeah, this is what you got to do, step A, step B, and you see that a lot on the Python side, but it's really more detailed from what I've seen on the website Unity through suffering.

Chris Miles: 20:30

it sounds like.

Tim McConnaughy: 20:33

Yeah, and usually what you find is not that the Microsoft documentation tells you this. Right, it's always somebody's Stack Overflow type thing, where somebody suffered through it and they figured it out. Now they're going to save you some time. No, you're absolutely right, dude.

Chris Miles: 20:45

I feel like I see that a lot with Microsoft specific products. I don't mean to dig at them or anything, but I remember I was building pipelines in Azure DevOps and there were so many things where I was like I have no idea what this does and nothing in the documentation tells me what this does. It's all the community that's telling me what it does, which is just bonkers to me.

Erica Cooper: 21:06

Yeah, no, you're right, and it's funny. I mean, it's an inside joke sometimes when we deploy out for Azure Stack Hub or Azure Stack HCI, but Microsoft writes documentation. Inside joke sometimes, when we deploy out for Azure Stack Hub or Azure Stack HCI, but they, Microsoft, writes documentation. Now, you know, they're known, as you know, like a PC, you know Windows, you know company, but they write out networking and cloud-based deployment guides for these engineers and it's, it's some of the documentation. I'm like, okay, you can tell somebody that didn't know networking, oh, yeah, for sure. Because it's like what is this? I'll tell you an example. They were talking about routing protocols and so they were trying to explain well, this is how you can verify BTP neighbors. And I was like, I already know that, okay, so it just was the weirdest. I just looked at this and I said, wow, are we going to, can we edit these documentations or do we have to just look at this? Because this is insane. It's just, it's just a lot of different challenges for Microsoft.

Tim McConnaughy: 22:08

Absolutely. So I know we don't have a, so yeah, let's. Let's move on to certification stuff, because one of the biggest things of course with government entities is having to match, having to have it to get government certified, like FedRAMP and all of the government certifications. So from a MAG perspective, what does that look like? I mean, you obviously have done multiple customers, so I'm sure those customers have different certification requirements. So for these discrete data centers, does Microsoft just you know, blanket, like hey, we support everything, or like how does how does the whole certification process? I wouldn't have thought so Right. So I'm curious what the cert process looks like.

Erica Cooper: 22:55

So that's a good question. Now that's the part I really don't get involved with. But I will say this much for the deployments I've worked with, you have to be FedRAMP, fisma compliance, fips compliance. All of your devices has to be in that FedRAMP. You know, I guess, enclave or whatever. So if it's not like, for example, the UCS C240M7s are not FedRAMP. So you'll never see a deployment until they actually get that certification completed, you know. Or the Dell some of the Dell boxes are not FedRAMP compliant. So you know, it's just a matter of you know, they have strict requirements. And then it's also not just Microsoft but it's also the government customer too.

Alex Perkins: 23:43

Yeah, of course.

Erica Cooper: 23:43

Yeah, so then you're looking at two different agencies that the vendor and then the whoever, the customer, but it takes a long time for FedRAMP stuff to get approved.

Alex Perkins: 23:54

I'm curious, because there's different levels to FedRAMP. Are there products within MAG that are different levels? Like you know, there are some products that you can use and some you can't, depending on, yeah, like what level the customer needs?

Erica Cooper: 24:10

oh yeah, because that sounds like a pain to navigate as well. That's oh it is, and that's why I'm I'm glad I don't get involved with it to that level because, uh, but it's more on the, what I've seen is more of the, the account team. They kind of handle most of that. But I will say that some of the products from, like I said, from Dell or from Cisco or any other vendor, they just don't. Some of the products are compliant, some of them are not. I do know the M7s are not compliant. Ucsx they're not compliant, they're working on it, but if they're not compliant, then Microsoft's like no, we can't use it.

Tim McConnaughy: 24:42

But you know, if they're not compliant, then Microsoft's like no, we can't use it Right, that makes sense. I mean, at least in those data centers. Obviously that makes perfect sense.

Chris Miles: 24:48

Yeah, so obviously with this might be circling back to some point we may have. We probably should have covered earlier. But let's say, what's the procurement process to even start using cloud for government? I'm assuming not any old Joe Schmo can start deploying resources in these cloud-based or sorry, these government-focused cloud platforms. Is there a specific process that needs to go through to even deploy there?

Erica Cooper: 25:19

So when you said process, meaning like, are you talking about from a delivery perspective or just going there and kind of talk to the customer about from a, I guess, a design perspective?

Chris Miles: 25:31

The first part. So like, let's say, I'm a specific agency and I've decided I'm going to start deploying resources in the cloud. Do I have to discuss this with the CSP and get some kind of regulatory thing in place to even start pushing there, or how does that work?

Erica Cooper: 25:46

Yeah. So I've seen it both ways. I've seen it where the account team like from either Dell or Cisco, they'll come in and say, hey, what are your cloud challenges that you want to partake in? How can we help? These are the solutions that we have that we can help you with that. I've also seen it where the cloud service provider will bring the vendors in and say, hey, this is our preferred partner for this. So it just kind of depends. One thing I will say is that the compute is a big factor and with the government you have to be careful because of course you know they'll go out and they'll solicit what is it? Three or four different bids? I think sometimes six.

Tim McConnaughy: 26:31

Yeah, the RFP process is legendary.

Erica Cooper: 26:33

Yeah, yeah, it hasn't changed. But sometimes they'll solicit RFPs and what I've seen is sometimes that the most economically priced you know like, you know, if you come in at the lowest rank, then sometimes that'll, you know, get you in the door. That may not be the best solution for your environment. So that's why I've seen it both ways, where the account team would come in and talk you know, they've got, you know different relationships with directors and you know people, key, you know personnel, but they'll make that, you know introduction and they'll say, hey, these are cloud-based offerings. And we also have seen it the other way, where it's the cloud service provider, in this case Azure, come in and say, okay, this is what we can do and this is our preferred agency or preferred partner to actually do the work or deployment. Did that answer your question, chris?

Chris Miles: 27:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it did, Thank you.

Tim McConnaughy: 27:35

No, this has been great. I'm glad we were able to kind of cover this. I know we've talked about GovCloud on the show multiple times but not really ever really got into well, what is. It's one of the things where it sounds like it explains itself. If you just say GovCloud, it's obvious right, but there's obviously a lot of nuance into it and I'm sure there's a lot of nuance even between the CSPs and what they actually offer to some degree, although I imagine they all have to have the same certifications, they'll have to support the same government requirements, if you will. Yeah, no, I think this is a really good start to talk about GovCloud. We'll have to have you back sometime to talk about some GovCloud designs and, from a design perspective, how you have to design differently. We touched on it a little bit, but I think there's definitely a lot more to talk about there. But thank you for coming on the show. It was awesome to have you Guys. Any thoughts?

Alex Perkins: 28:31

Nothing specific. I was going to ask you real quick. This is kind of a little off topic, but you mentioned this in the beginning and since I have a similar kind of background, I'm curious. But you said you came from a data center background and I've noticed that a lot of network engineers getting into cloud come more from service provider or WAN. Do you think that has given you more of an advantage? How has that helped you as you transitioned to cloud?

Erica Cooper: 29:00

I think it's put me at a unique advantage, and I'll say this much, put me at a unique advantage one, and I'll say this much so, although it's important to understand, you know, like the, the route switch, or the enterprise and the service provider, I see a lot of different times. I see a lot of times where, um, the data center world is easier for me to make that transition because I'm familiar with virtualization, I've dealt with hyper v, vmware, um, you know storage, saying you just all of that and whereas you know an enterprise engineer or a service provider, they probably wouldn't see that, they would not see some of those different, you know.

Erica Cooper: 29:33

So it's like, ok, well, I already know about it. And that was one reason why I said, when I think about five, six years ago, I was like I was doing a lot of Cisco, aci, hyperflex, you know, deployments and stuff like that, and I was like, well, what's next after this? And so I was like, ok, well, and then they started talking about AWS, cloud, and I was like, yeah, but most of my customers don't really touch AWS, they touch Azure. And so I just started saying, okay, let me start really looking at this cloud solution. So it was easier for me to make that transition.

Erica Cooper: 30:10

But I also have a route switch background. I'm a, you know. I tried to. You know it took me what? Three times to get my four times to get my CCIE, but they were the first. Three attempts were on the route switch, now it's enterprise and then the last attempt was on the data center side. So my route switch background still never kind of leaves me. It just it's always there kind of like in the background. I just know, oh, okay, you know, I know when to bring it out, but or, you know, kind of use it as necessary. So Great answer, thank you. Or kind of use it as necessary. Great answer, thank you. I mean, if you want, I can go over one of the projects I dealt with for one of my it's still a government agency, but it's not nearly as strict as the IC community.

Erica Cooper: 30:55

We did a VXLAN, evpn, bgp multi-site, multi-fabric solution for, you know, one of my government agencies and we're still actually deploying that out. It's not finished, but it's kind of. What the government wanted was they wanted to have resources available for, you know, different sites for different sites and then have the extended across the WAN to other sites locally within the United States. And so I chose for a solution was VXLAN, but then also we're doing an integration with AWS Cloud. Now I'm learning that part of it now.

Erica Cooper: 31:42

So it's been really unique because as soon as I said, well, you guys don't want to use Azure, and they were like no, we want to use AWS, and so it was kind of, oh OK, so at least I get a chance to kind of touch that, you know, touch that environment. But I'm right now building out the VXLAN portion, the underlay, overlay, and then we have a point of presence, a direct connect between one of our sites going out to AWS, and that looks a lot different because you have our low balancers, our F5 low balancers, and they do a lot of what is it global low balancer and whatnot. And so that was pretty unique to see that environment because I've within the other side, on the Azure side, it was very limited as far as just one you know single low bouncing for that enclave, whereas this is global is for all of the different sites that we're looking at, for VXLAN and multi-fabric. So it's pretty unique.

Erica Cooper: 32:46

And then the other thing that I think is really unique is Cisco has NDFC, which is Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller, so it gives you the ability to look at all your fabrics. You know VXLAN fabrics and what you know information is going across. You know anything that you want to look at from like, let's say, an endpoint or anything from that perspective. So it's pretty unique, kind of setting that up and, you know, delivering that for the customer.

Chris Miles: 33:14

Yeah, Tim is our recent expert on Nexus Dashboard.

Tim McConnaughy: 33:18

I am not. I mean, I passed the Cisco U course for the research for the 26 credits and I have to say it was an extremely painful experience. Yeah, same here.

Chris Miles: 33:29

Not the.

Tim McConnaughy: 33:29

Cisco UP. It's just, it's not. It's very unknown to me as an enterprise guy so yeah.

Tim McConnaughy: 33:37

OK but that's a that's a very cool design. I love it. I love to hear more about it. So it's yeah, I mean multi-cloud. When you start getting into multi-cloud, things get really interesting. That's when we think things get the most interesting, and hybrid as well. Right, you were talking about Direct Connects and whatnot. We definitely think. So we'll definitely have to have you back on to talk about that a little bit more. I mean, obviously to the degree that you can, obviously without naming names and showing where the bodies are buried, if you will.

Erica Cooper: 34:07

If I do that, you guys would never see me again.

Tim McConnaughy: 34:11

They'd come to our house and put the bag over our head too.

Erica Cooper: 34:14

Yeah, it's like hey, weren't you on that shoulder? Nope.

Tim McConnaughy: 34:19

They'll go all the way to Australia to get Chris yeah throw me in the water. Awesome. Okay, so I guess this is probably a good place to wrap for now. Again, it's been awesome having you on the show. Eric, we will have to have you back. Thanks for joining us.

Erica Cooper: 34:35

Sure my pleasure. Thank you, I appreciate it.

Chris Miles: 34:38

Anything you want to plug or where they can find you. Anything you want to plug or where they can find you.

Erica Cooper: 34:42

Oh yeah, so I'm on Twitter at tech lady T, e, c, h, l, a, y, d, e, e and you know I'm always there. If you've got questions, just reach out and you know it's just. You know part of the it community, so you got these great guys here that open up the platform for me. So I appreciate that.

Tim McConnaughy: 35:00

But anything you got a question about, just throw it out there and one of us will probably get a chance to answer it. So love it, Okay. So if you enjoyed the episode, please follow us on every conceivable social media. Go to our website, click like on our wherever you can. Click like for us by our cereal, and we'll see you guys next time. Hi everyone, it's Tim and this has been the Cables to Clouds podcast. Thanks for tuning in today. If you enjoyed our show, please subscribe to us in your favorite podcast catcher, as well as subscribe and turn on notifications for our YouTube channel to be notified of all our new episodes. Follow us on socials at Cables2Clouds. You can also visit our website for all the show notes at Cables2Cloudscom. Thanks again for listening and see you next time.