SDN- NFV Certified from Metro Ethernet Forum

It has been a while since I have blogged any updates, so I'll knock out a few!

First, I just completed the course and certification from Metro Ethernet Forum for SDN-NFV.

This was a 3 day course, and it was surprisingly hands-on as it focused heavily on OpenFlow and OpenDaylight. I was always wanting to learn more about these, so I found this quite rewarding.

One interesting stumbling block in the labs was the fact that there is a -O option that needs to be used to specify the proper version of OpenFlow. 

The course seemed to focus on the use case and context of using OpenFlow (and OpenDaylight) to configure switches - but not "everything else" out there in the field of networking that could be configured with something like OpenFlow.

For example, it was my understanding that the primary beneficiary of something like OpenFlow (and OpenDaylight) was in the Wireless (802.11x) domain, where people had scores, hundreds or even thousands of access points that had to be configured or upgraded, and it was extremely difficult to this by hand.

But, the course focused on switches - OpenVSwitch switches to be precise. And that was probably because the OpenVSwitch keeps things simple enough for the course and instructor.

Problem is, in my shop, everyone is using Juniper switches, and Juniper does not play ball with OpenFlow and OpenVSwitch. So I'm not sure how much this can or will be put to use in our specific environment. I do, however, use OpenVSwitch in my own personal OpenVSwitch-based OpenStack environment, and since OpenVSwitch works well with DPDK and VPP, this knowledge can come in handy as I need to start doing more sophisticated things with packet flows.

Nontheless, I found the course interesting and valuable. And the exam also centered around the ETSI-MANO Reference Architecture. I had familiar with this architecture, but like all exams like this, I missed questions because of time, or overthinking things, or picking the wrong of two correct answers (not the best answer), et al. But, I passed the exam, and I guess that's what matters most.