Are you a network engineer or an aspiring network engineer for sure you have heard about Cisco, how about juniper probably you heard of it too as the biggest competitor of cisco in routers and enterprise network solutions. How about HP Aruba? Also the biggest competitor of Cisco in wireless solutions. How about Arista? Well, it’s the biggest competitor of Cisco in data center networking and SDN solutions. In this video, we will talk about Arista as a company and their products in more detail. We will also discuss why you need to learn arista technology.
Arista Networks as a Company
Arista networks it’s a computer network company based in Silicon Valley, Santa Clara California to be specific. They offer various solutions but they gain popularity from their data center ethernet switches which is designed to be a low latency and built for programmability and automation. All switches runs in a single operating system which is also called Extensible OS or EOS and this also runs on a Linux kernel.
History
In 2004, Google or Alphabet Inc. was looking for a switch that could tie together 100,000 servers at 1G/s ethernet speed. So at that time 1G was the standard speed for data center switches. Tying a switch to 100,000 servers at 1G speed and at the cost of $100 per server was very complicated and many believed it was impossible. So Andy the co-founder of sun microsystems put together a team and this includes David Cheriton and Ken Duda to deliver on Google’s request. Four years after which is in 2008, their first product was created and this was also the same year they appointed Jayshree Ullal as the president and CEO of Arista and in 2010 they launched their first switch in the market and that device offered six times throughput compared to other data center switches. This is also the same year Arista and Microsoft created hyperscale cloud networking blueprint.
Data Center/Cloud Networking and SDN
Arista ethernet switches can run as a standalone device with automation and programmability. Most notably using python scripts with native automation features and optionally we can also add Cloud Vision as the Software Defined Networking Controller (SDN) to enable telemetry and automation features even without coding python. Arista networks has always been the leader in cloud and data center networking solutions. Other arista network solutions – they have the Cognitive Wi-Fi it’s a wireless LAN solutions for enterprise campus environment. I would say it’s not picking up yet as wireless solutions is still dominated by the likes of Cisco and HP. They also have security solutions this is when they acquire the company Awake so Arista Awake Security is an AI based security operations solutions. It still not gaining popularity still limited resources and public training is not yet available.
Hyper Scale Cloud Network
Here’s how powerful Arista data center network solution is. Automation – believe it or not, python network automation is way easier simpler and more versatile with arista switches compared to other vendors. It’s also designed and built for scalability. cloud and application integration. We’re talking about up to million of servers. Hyperscale Model – here is an interesting trivia, after Arista and Microsoft created the hyperscale cloud networking blueprint, other cloud giants become Arista’s customer as well. Companies like Google, Facebook (Meta), Netflix and many more. It is safe to say that the cloud as we know today wouldn’t exist at the scale that it does without Arista switches.
Why you need to learn Arista
And here are the reasons why you need to learn Arista. Identical command syntax with Cisco, as a matter of fact it’s almost the same as Cisco Nexus 9000 switches just few minor differences. If you’re already CNA or an experienced cisco network engineer, you just need to spend few hours to learn arista switches. It would be a good addition to your skill sets and additional expertise in your resume.
Arista Certifications and SDN-Pros
Certifications we have a Arista Certified Engineer, so they recently changed their certification program in 2021 changed it to multi-level certifications. It’s the same as what Fortinet did, in Fortinet they have NSE 1, 2, 3 etc. And for Arista, before it was just ACE-A and A stands for associate level. to be honest with you i’m not really impressed they should have done it the traditional way so the traditional way is you have an associate level then multiple specializations or professional level uh this professional level should be multiple path so there should be a path for automation cloud networking security wireless and many more then the higher tier or the expert level yeah certification should be only three or maximum four levels.
The good news is once you are certified you are not required to retake an exam in order to keep your certifications it’s based in point system many vendors are doing this already such as cisco CompTIA and many others you can earn points through various ways like attending a webinar participating in communities such as forums submitting a white paper or attending a higher level certification course.
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