The ultimate purpose of this book is to be the single, most complete source for working knowledge related to providing high availability with Juniper Networks equipment. Though you may not find detailed configurations for all protocols and interfaces, you will find those tweaks and knobs that will provide high availability.
This book is divided into four parts, with a total of 25 chapters, and some general reference items put into the appendixes. The chapters are written by four different authors, although all of us tended to review each other’s work. You’ll be able to tell different voices in the writing styles, and we hope that is generally refreshing rather than a hindrance. Here is a detailed account of what’s in this book.
- Chapter 1, High Availability Network Design Considerations
This chapter provides real-world perspective on the relative cost associated with making a network highly available and is the only nontechnical chapter in the book. It opens by describing a very simple, small enterprise network and then adds layers of redundancy, each designed to protect against a wider range of threats to continuity. The chapter concludes with a chart comparing the relative cost of the cumulative layers.
- Chapter 2, Hardware High Availability
This chapter focuses on the foundation of Juniper Networks high availability: the hardware. It starts by discussing the divided architecture available on all systems and expands to the specific hardware redundancy features of the Juniper product lines.
- Chapter 3, Software High Availability
This chapter builds on the hardware knowledge gained in Chapter 2 to highlight the features of the Juniper software that ensure high availability. The chapter looks at the stable operating system on which the system is built and the divided software architecture that keeps the network running.
- Chapter 4, Control Plane High Availability
This chapter provides in-depth understanding of control plane and forwarding plane interactions. Then it covers details of the different high availability features: Graceful Routing Engine Switchover (GRES), Graceful Restart (GR), Non-Stop Active Routing (NSR), and Non-Stop Bridging (NSB). The chapter concludes with a list of protocol and platform support for different high availability tools.
- Chapter 5, Virtualization for High Availability
This chapter provides an overview of advanced applications of the control plane in a data center environment. The chapter also discusses the latest developments in control plane scalability and provides solutions to control plane scaling problems present at large service providers.
- Chapter 6, JUNOS Pre-Upgrade Procedures
This chapter provides an overview of the things a user needs to keep in mind when preparing to upgrade JUNOS. Then it dives into configuration and use of unified In-Service Software Upgrade (ISSU). The chapter concludes with a handy collection of protocol mechanisms that can be used to divert traffic around a non-ISSU chassis that is being upgraded.
- Chapter 7, Painless Software Upgrades
This chapter is the second of a three-chapter series on software upgrades. It covers the syntax and options available for upgrading software on JUNOS platforms and describes the importance of a fallback procedure and fallback authority. The chapter concludes with special considerations for Juniper Networks J Series chassis, including rescue configurations.
- Chapter 8, JUNOS Post-Upgrade Verifications
This chapter provides an overview of JUNOS commands used to verify network device state after an OS upgrade. The chapter then describes how to gracefully undo the traffic diversion techniques described in Chapter 6, and is an important companion to that chapter.
- Chapter 9, Monitoring for High Availability
This chapter provides an overview of JUNOS features and industry standards that can be used to monitor network equipment to ensure network uptime. Juniper-specific features, such as JUNOScript, are introduced.
- Chapter 10, Management Interfaces
This chapter details the different interfaces, including the command-line interface (CLI), GUIs, and application programming interfaces (APIs), that are used to manage Juniper Networks equipment to ensure high availability.
- Chapter 11, Management Tools
This chapter builds on the previous two chapters by discussing tools available for managing network equipment. The chapter discusses both Juniper Network tools as well as open source tools that can interact with the APIs in JUNOS Software.
- Chapter 12, Managing Intradomain Routing Table Growth
This chapter opens with a discussion of intelligent IP address allocation for networks with a high availability focus. The chapter then looks at the configuration options available for controlling the size of the intradomain routing table while at the same time protecting the availability of the network.
- Chapter 13, Managing an Interdomain Routing Table
A companion to Chapter 12, this chapter looks at configuration elements that an administrator would use to control the locally received content of the interdomain routing table. Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)-related policy and configuration options are the focal point in this chapter, and it is one of several that discuss how BGP scalability mechanisms can be used to manage the local network.
- Chapter 14, Fast High Availability Protocols
This chapter provides an overview of several protocols that support high availability by providing fast failure detection and recovery. It discusses protocols for optical and Ethernet networks, and then dives into options for lowering Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) timers and using Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD). The chapter finishes by covering redundancy protocols, including Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP), and several options for Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) path protection.
- Chapter 15, Transitioning Routing and Switching to a Multivendor Environment
This is the first in a series of chapters that look at how products from Juniper can be added into a single-vendor network to improve the availability of the network. The chapter uses a layered strategy that first compares interface characteristics, then IGPs, and then BGP configuration syntax between JUNOS and IOS devices.
- Chapter 16, Transitioning MPLS to a Multivendor Environment
This chapter builds on the successes of the previous chapter by adding Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) and Label Distribution Protocol (LDP)-signaled MPLS to the multivendor BGP topology. The chapter includes discussion of MPLS interoperability “gotchas” between JUNOS and IOS, and concludes with two case studies that show layered transition and site-based transition to a multivendor state.
- Chapter 17, Monitoring Multivendor Networks
In this chapter, the authors compare Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and syslog configuration syntax between JUNOS and IOS platforms, and look at best practices for use of the tools to monitor multivendor networks. The chapter concludes with a brief look at the J-Web GUI as a device monitoring tool.
- Chapter 18, Network Scalability
This chapter opens with a comparison of throughput capabilities of the different product families that run JUNOS. The chapter then looks at additional configuration tweaks that allow the network to grow or shrink as needed to meet changing demands from the user base. A key feature of this chapter is high availability zoning for BGP route reflector schemes. The chapter closes with a look at how traffic engineering can help a network scale while meeting customer availability and bandwidth requirements.
- Chapter 19, Choosing, Migrating, and Merging Interior Gateway Protocols
This chapter discusses the two most commonly used industry-standard IGPs: Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS). The first section examines the advantages and disadvantages of each protocol, and looks at how each one supports high availability. The next section examines what is involved in migrating from one of these IGPs to the other. The chapter finishes with considerations and recommendations for merging separate networks that run the same IGP.
- Chapter 20, Merging BGP Autonomous Systems
This chapter discusses features of JUNOS and best common practices that can be used to merge Autonomous Systems (ASs) while preserving network uptime. Issues that occur in large-scale BGP deployments are also raised.
- Chapter 21, Making Configuration Audits Painless
This chapter provides information on using JUNOS Software features to audit network configurations to ensure that human error or misconfiguration does not cause network downtime.
- Chapter 22, Securing Your Network Equipment Against Security Breaches
This chapter provides an overview of options to provide strong security for your device. It discusses authentication methods, and then lists a series of features you can implement to harden the device. The chapter then dives into firewall filters, discussing how they are configured and implemented. It ends with several examples using filters to protect the network as well as the device itself.
- Chapter 23, Monitoring and Containing DoS Attacks in Your Network
Building on the previous chapter, this chapter discusses strategies for attack detection, as well as steps you can take to lessen the impact of the attack while it is in progress. It then covers strategies for proactively reducing the impact of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks on your network. The chapter concludes by discussing several methods you can use to gather evidence of the attack.
- Chapter 24, Goals of Configuration Automation
This chapter discusses how configuration automation can be used to prevent human errors that cause network downtime.
- Chapter 25, Automated Configuration Strategies
This chapter provides an overview of how to use the JUNOS tools to conduct configuration automation for various network settings and architectures.
We include a few items for your perusal: a sample checklist for getting new JUNOS devices operational, a sample audit list, and a JUNOS configuration statement review for high availability operations.
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