Juniper QFX5100 Series: A Comprehensive Guide to Building Next-Generation Networks

This was an easy weekend read, and quite honestly I'd never thought I'd say this about a technical book but I literally could not put the book down. Doug has amassed a wealth of great information, approaching the subject matter from a standpoint of brevity, applying the Goldilocks principle -- not too much and not too little -- but rather just the right amount of information.Do not be confused by the title -- this is not JUST a book about the QFX5100 series. As the subtitle might indicate, it's more of a book on building next-gen networks, specifically Data Center networks, and serves as a fantastic primer on the various protocols and technologies that are becoming the mainstay of this world.As the networking world works overtime to catch up to the virtualization offered by storage and compute resources, the reader tasked with creating the network of tomorrow will appreciate the coverage of building various types of fabrics of varying dimensions -- whether it's coverage of Juniper's Virtual Chassis Fabric for building small to medium sized Ethernet Fabrics, or Clos Fabrics for building extremely large IP underlay networks, the coverage is top notch. Readers will get a thorough introduction to the concepts of VXLAN and overlay networking with VTEPs using controllers such as Juniper's Contrail or VMware's NSX and their respective control plane signaling mechanisms such as EVPN and OVSDB.I sincerely appreciated the in-depth coverage of the architecture of the QFX 5100 Series, the Broadcom Trident II chipset, as well as an inside look at the control plane virtualization that takes place on the QFX 5100 itself (apparently, Juniper is really taking virtualization to heart). I also enjoyed the chapter on Performance and Scaling which covered the options for modifying latency throughout the box (cut-through vs. store-and-forward) as well as options for tailoring the Unified Forwarding Table to fit the needs of individual networks. The chapter on Network Automation is also a nice addition, with coverage of various automation tools such as PyEZ, Ansible, Puppet and Chef, just to name a few.The astute reader familiar with Juniper's website will recognize that a few of the chapters comprising this book are borrowed from various white papers that Doug has authored - however, all in all, there is quite a bit more information in this book than can be gleaned from resources on Juniper's public facing collateral. There were a few minor grammatical and technical inconsistencies (largely text that didn't match diagrams)... however this did not detract from the overall value of the book and I can only ascribe this to the fact that Doug did not use me as a technical editor on this book. <hint hint>Last but not least, although not specifically mentioned, I do believe this book as well his other QFX10000 book will prove to be invaluable resources for anyone preparing for the JNCDS-DC, JNCIP-DC, or the upcoming JNCIE-DC exams, as I strongly believe that technical content from all three exams will be likely be covered here.All in all, an excellent resource, and one that I am sure to reference regularly in my day to day engagements working with customers building out next-generation data center networks. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and am looking forward to reading his recent book on the QFX10000 series.

This is a fantastic book. I read it cover to cover in a single weekend, unable to put it down.If you are new to networking and you need an introduction to basic concepts such as switching, VLANs, spanning tree, LLDP, routing protocols, etc. then this book is not for you. There are other books, such as JUNOS Enterprise Switching, that cover the basics.This books unapologetically concentrates on the unique features that differentiate the QFX5100 switch from other switches on the market, such as control plane virtualization, virtual chassis fabric (VCF), enhanced automation (Puppet, Chef, PyEZ, zero touch provisioning), IP fabrics, overlay networking with VXLAN, etc.This approach allows each topic to be covered in-depth with lots of interesting technical details. At one point, Doug describes how to drop down into the Broadcom shell to look at the various hardware tables in the Tident II chip. At another point he uses the virtualization shell (virsh) to demonstrate how virtualization works on the QFX5100. This really allows you to understand how things really work "under the cover".Despite the technical depth, the book is very easy to digest because of the conversational writing style.Highly recommended. (Only available on Kindle at the time of writing)

Another good Juniper product guide from Doug, though a lot shorter than the MX book. As Doug explains, a lot of the subject matter for QFX is explained elsewhere as it's common to the JunOS product line. The content in this book is specific to the hardware, and to the types of network architecture you can implement with it. The hardware (BCM Trident II) is explained in detail, and I think it really highlights the advantages JunOS brings to this merchant silicon that is also found in Cisco Nexus and Arista 75XX switches.The sections on large-scale Layer-3 fabrics and overlay networking are nice, especially for anyone who has been burned by the shortfalls of large L2 networks. Doug explains the options for taking this from a single switch to ridiculous scale.One thing I would have liked to see is a little bit on CoS for the QFX5100. It's true that a lot is covered elsewhere but there are some new features introduced on this hardware in this area, for example, fcoe and no-loss forwarding classes and multidestination queues. The Juniper manuals are always a little dry in this so I would have liked to see something on this in the book.One final point; the sub-heading for the book is "A comprehensive guide to building next-generation networks" I would change this to "next-generation data-center networks" because this is really the scope for the QFX product.

Another excellent effort by Doug Hanks!

Very helpful book helping out with platform specific features. Just spot on for the professional.

ところどころ中途半端に読んでいる状態です。非常にいいと思います。調べものをしてたら、deamon processの解説ページが検索に引っかかり、この本を知りました。メーカーサイトのドキュメントに結構誤りがあるし、要点を知りたかったので買ってみました。購入する検証機の構成を考えている最中で、QFX5100-48TはVCFのspineに成れないことをこの本で知りました。（するつもりで買おうとしていた・・・セーフ。24Qにします）厚みをそんなになく軽いので、カバンに入れて会社と家を往復しています。紙5k円に対して、Kindle版が7k超円ってどういうこと？？-1はその分。ホントはKinle版が欲しかったけど、紙にして経費で落としました。Kindle版が3kぐらいになったら個人用に買ってもいい（鮮度が落ちないうちならね）。2015/11/27追記紙版、7k超に値上がりしてる（kindle版の方が高くなった）。というかこれが適正？お買い得なタイミングだったみたい。