VRF Lite on Nexus 5600

We are using 5696Q with VRF-Lite with BGP as the routing protocol, stumbled upon this from Ian Pepenlnjak, hes found similar findings so that's good! Anyway not worth rewriting his post either as it will be much better than anything I could put out right now.
VRF Lite on Nexus 5600

Cisco 40G BiDi optics

Working on some Data Center refresh work, looking further at the most resent Nexus platforms I noticed that Cisco have released a cleaver 40Gb QSFP that will use only a single fiber pair to transport 40Gb.  Currently only available on the Nexus 9000 but I’m sure something this useful will make its way down the product list.

Cisco QSFP 40-Gbps Bidirectional Short-Reach Transceiver Data Sheet.

Update: I have them working now on the Cisco Nexus 5696Q running 7.0 NXOS, currently only prototype setup <10 Meters but they are working well.

Cisco Catalyst 6500E/SUP720 Architecture

Used this this morning for a quick refresher on the 6509E back plane cross connect, another useful posting from Mr Greg Ferro of the Packet Pushers fame. http://etherealmind.com/cisco-supervisor-720-why-architecture-performance/

When to hard drives meet their maker?

Interesting Statistics from Back Blaze on the life of hard drives, they have over 25,000 of them so they have a good sample to work from.  Brings home that they are mechanical, they will fail, so keep your backups at the ready.

• 4 years 20% Fail, 
• 6 Years 50% Fail.

http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/11/12/how-long-do-disk-drives-last/