My Cisco & Fortinet Network Lab

what's up y'all it's your boy Chris here your one and only data Bunny and in today's quick video I'm just going to be going over my lab uh this is more of my physical Cisco lab and it's a mixture right we have 40 Gates we have four the switches in there we have uh then we have the Cisco routers and the Cisco switches but um I pretty much am going to go over how I constructed the lab and what I'm actually using uh as far as the equipment goes right what routers am I using what fortigates am I using what switches are you know I'm using and uh we're just going to go over the rundown of the quick physical lab and then after that I will show you guys exactly how I constructed the actual uh diagram it was an early aspect of it so it'll be cool to show you guys that and uh just give you a quick rundown of what I had in mind when I was constructing the uh the lab so let's go right to it all right y'all so this is the lab so go here give you just a quick overview of it now it looks crazy right so I had a bunch of stuff on this table that I I finally was able to put in a rack and I can clean this entire table up but here is where the magic happens um and was cool is it can communicate with my gns3 setup which I'll go to go through in a different video but we have the main core part of the network this is the network that I run and I am running on right now as we speak my Wi-Fi everything is coming through here which is the net gear and then it's going to the fora switch and that fora switch through fora link is going to the fora gate vlans assignments all of that is through the fortigate and it sends and routes things out to the internet through the uh Xfinity ISP over there so some people may be asking why not just use Cisco APS or why not use 40 APS a I didn't have 408s at the time of doing this network um second Cisco APS I rather just use that in the lab and not like my actual uh Network that runs 24/7 this is all that runs 24/7 this fora switch this fora gate this N Gear wireless router and that ISP uh w box so in the other room actually have a fora switch there as well you can call like an IDF which I use to uh hardwire other things in my bedroom so here is the core drro section of the lab you can call this the collapse Core Design so we have the two Cisco Nexus and these are the Cisco go Nexus 3048 TP where I get these from I got these from eBay you can find them a lot on eBay um reasonable price it was $75 each so I had uh $75 for each for each Cisco Nexus really good deal turned them on they work great uh every port seems to be working on them uh I have SSH running on them I have a VPC so they're actually seen as like one chassis and how I got that functioning is I have the actual uh vrf management ports they are connecting you can see the wires here they are connecting back to the fora switches this fora switch here and I can access them through their IP addresses which will give me the management access to manage them in the other room uh then we also have the keep alive links this is what uh allowing the two of the Nexus know who's alive and whatnot and um here these actually these two links here see these two links this is a trunk a port Channel a trunk from the that I've configured on the gate to the for switch and they are going down to the Cisco Nexus uh VPC so we got one going nextus one and the other one going nextus two and it creates that Port Channel link so I can see both of them on my for gate and then we have like the wireless land controller I have to get a console cable for this wireless land controller uh so I haven't even consoled into it yet or anything so it's just it's just loose right now just in but I really can't I really haven't done anything to it yet no configurations or anything but we have this um within this lab we have a stack so a switch stack so these three switches these are Cisco Catalyst 3750 uh Poe 48 ports these were these were graphed from the University of Chicago uh when we were doing the network refresh um they were pretty much decommissioning these types they kept the X Series but these they actually uh were just giving them away so I went ahead side you know signed some paperwork and they released them out to me so it's great to do that and this is why I say when you're working at these past Network jobs don't be afraid to ask for equipment cuz a lot of times they're going to be giving out that equipment and that's just free stuff so these switches I don't know I don't know how much they cost but you probably go on eBay and and try to tally up how much each one cost you trying to get three definitely go on eBay and see but uh I got these pretty much for free uh for just working being a network technician at the time so in the wireless L controler if you don't know it's The 4400 Series so that's that and then we go down right so focusing on these uh these uh Catalyst switches just want to add that I have a loop design which I haven't configured yet but these would be in a port channel that goes to this switch stack so if you don't see here here are the stack cables these stack of cables I also was able to grab from the University of Chicago as well and they were able to release them to me so they're all stacked as one chassis and from Nexus one down to this first switch it sees the stack next is two down to the last switch it ceased to stack this is for redundancy um if this switch dies and we didn't have this link we would have lost all the links to the rest of the of the switch stack however because we have this second link here on this VPC if this switch was to die we still have network connectivity and can still see everything upward now you may be saying but how we see everything upward if this cable no longer there you know or like let's say like the let's say the Nexus dies well again they're all connected from these switch taxs cables so technically they they are still connected so if this Nexus goes down I can still access everything from the second Nexus and all of that is again going back up to the fora switch which through fora link is connected to the fortigate 70f this forgate 70f was uh given to be by my past job as a network engineer get certified and certain amount of C certificates for foret foret sends out you know a free fortigate that's how I got that utilize your resources and past jobs man like you really do that however this for switch I actually bought uh on Amazon this was an actual new fora switch this is the the uh fora switch 124e so that's that this ne's Wireless R I had for a while for for for a long time so working our way down all this other stuff haven't really been thought of yet but technically I can simulate other WS or other networks so it goes to a router this is a Cisco 1921 router and also have like an ASA here this ASA is a see if you can read that an ASA 5512 the Firepower module is not in but I could probably get that too find that somewhere for good price um one of the issues right now with this ASA is the image I have to get the image to actually save on the actual device uh there was a past issue where where somehow the image just didn't I don't know it just disappeared so I'm going to have to work with that and do some research on it right now kind of don't need it but uh it would be pretty cool to get the ASA back up and running it was working um man like months ago and for some reason just stopped working so again right I may have to get a new ASA if I have to or just buy a completely different model but um again eBay eBay eBay eBay these switch these switches these are the the uh 2960 plus POV these also came from eBay um this was just simulated another Network right and we have this forgate 60D no license on it but it still does like all of the routing functions uh it does all of the uh policies you know this is one advantage of having the physical for Gates instead of the the uh licensed used images for gns3 cuz they're not limited to the amount of policies you can put on them so this is why I like getting the physical gear of the Ford Gates because they don't really limit you if you only just have you know just a licensing issue but I don't really worry about that because I already have like an actual new fortigate here that actually has licenses and all of that um but yeah I can pretty much simulate let's say uh let's say you know another Network comes down here I can simulate bgp if I wanted to bgp can be here on this router I have bgp already running on my actual forgate you know being able to see all that if I want to uh I can also create other networks that can go through other networks and say I want to create a staging environment where I could do like certain Network automation tasks where I can plug things in this forgate sends a DHCP uh leas to anything that's plugged into these switches boom boom boom it gets it the network sees it and then it goes all the way back up to this forgate this forgate sees it through the Nexus you know you can do a whole bunch of stuff man you can do a whole bunch of stuff so uh we got that and this is another uh before I jump around this right here is a Cisco 1841 router this router is just it's a fast ethernet so it's only 100 Megs uh I could put modules in it if I wanted to but it's just 100 Megs these 1921s however are actual uh gig 1 gig ports so that's the only difference this this router this uh 1841 router I actually got from my very first it job um as I was revamping the entire network there there was equipment that was sitting there doing nothing this entire router was just sitting there doing absolutely nothing I verified if I could take it home boom and that's what's the story with that uh the same with uh so these switches were bought man I think like 2019 2018 I think 2019 um when I was just getting into it and I was figuring out what I wanted to do and I started getting more interested in networking these were the very first two switches that I ever bought for anything Network related how did I come about knowing about these with my past job um I saw these and I was like oh man these are Cisco switches but you know this was when I was during the time when I was taking the classes the CA in class and we were we haven't even touched the the switches in the classes yet but I saw them there racked and uh you know stacked there but I just never touched them at the time eBay picked these up didn't know anything about configuring switches that's how I started learning about switches just on these two switches alone and then that's when I went ahead and got the uh you know more switches and then the Cisco routers actually here's another 1921 same story eBay and the rest of this stuff is eBay this for this fortigate 240D this is a nice fortigate man this is actually a really nice fortigate the DMZ port was actually uh damaged damaged at the time but uh I went ahead and actually fixed it kind of like pushed you know pushed it in got it up and run and then we had the 40 gate 1000c this was also eBay 4 not a bad price at all uh I think it was like 200 or something like that maybe less than I think it was like 180 something but um again what's cool about these is they actually has uh 10 gig uplinks ports on them so this is a really really fast uh well at the time right we got like 40 gigs and stuff now uh with the qf uh Q uh SFP modules those are like the 40 gigs and whatnot these don't have that but you get the gist right this is just the lab and then we have like the 48 which I will actually connect to the switch stack here on once the wireless land controller it's up and running in the Nexus sees it the Nexus then sees the the aps on the switch Stacks boom then the wireless land controller sees it and it sends it out to the network here broadcast whatever needs to broadcast boom so uh that is that is it this is the lab this is the lab here so it's a lot lot going on right it's a lot you can do with this lab now is this specifically for ccmp no just whenever I want to test something out or do something I can always come here and what's cool is a half gns3 running once everything is connected and the routes are in place you know make sure things are reaching each other reaching the gate and whatnot as long as the gate sees what it sees here I will be able to Ping everything in gns3 as well and back and forth so this is the lab so all right so one thing I just want to explain here is that not all equipment was you know grabbed all at once it took it took some years to add all this up yeah so people would ask like how much did it cost or what I can't really tell you cuz it's been over the years but I will say that um take advantage of past jobs if they are up upgrading equipment take advantage of that two take advantage of eBay find some good deals make sure you do your research and reviews on the equipment and then you know hope for the best make sure they come at good and good you know standards make sure they come in good condition if not you can always return them so make sure you do have that ability to return equipment um so those are the two things eBay and past jobs all right y'all so this is the design aspect of uh uh you know what I had in mind when I created the lab you can see not everything is there but um not everything is perfectly correct how it was but we can see the fortigates the Nexus switches we can see the wireless land controller and the switch stack and it was working down from there we got the subnets here we have the Stag and switch and if we look through the home network diagram this is more of like the uh guess you can still call it a logical diagram uh but again as the vlans here but we also have the the actual uh blocks Network blocks so we have the internet Edge the internet Edge is where I'm getting the internet from which is of course that Forida gate and then we also have the staging environment we have a network service block we also have the data center block which the data center block is actually where my gns3 is running in and the data center block it's this machine here so this machine it's going to be running VMS uh we got uh rare hat virtual machines we got a buntu virtual machines open Suzy we have uh gns3 running I could probably I most likely could run a DCP server on it if I wanted to tftp server is already running on it uh we got you know a whole bunch of VMS so just making sure that my equipment can see that stuff right my lab can see that stuff and can go out and of course it's all happening because of this this core this this core drro layer this entire layer here is where the uh Cisco Nexus are pretty much putting everything together it's that NE it's that modular Network design so you can add and I can keep attaching more blocks on here if I wanted to so if I wanted to create another block and allocate it to her or something you know I create it and then attach it to the ne Nexus and again you know it's less disruption it's just you know where to put everything in your network at the access layer right boom where is it going to the Nexus uh this is that modular Network design that works really well uh when you put it all together so yeah so this is um I love the design stuff of this like I love doing stuff like this uh and then making it actually physically put it together and actually get it to work like this stuff is really cool so I will definitely start working on the rest of this stuff later but as you can see I'm also studying for the 6mp and I have a bunch of networking automation books and uh things like that so trying to allocate enough enough time I can so all right y'all so that is the video for today you know just going over a brief discussion of La what I have set up what did I do to grab those equipment what did I do um so yeah hope you guys enjoyed the video please like subscribe and share and yeah man I just updating you all on my journey network engineering Network Automation and development you know let's see what happens let's let's get it

Channel: Data Bunny

Views: 11,320

Keywords: cisco, network engineering, network engineer, networks, networking, ccnp, ccna, fortinet, tech, tech jobs, black in tech, labeveryday, my network lab, my cisco lab, cisco network engineer, how I studied for the ccna

Id: ZnKUtHN84Wg

Length: 19min 40sec (1180 seconds)

Published: Mon May 27 2024