CNT-02 · Cloud-Native and Telco Infrastructure

Design the rack before it arrives.

Plan the topology, storage traffic, automation and high availability for a hyperconverged rack, then defend the design in review.

Intermediate≈ 30 h 8 units4 labs
hcileaf-spinesdnnvme-ofrdmanfvautomation

You build: an architecture review document with a failure table.

In final review — the chapters for this course are still being finalised.

Promise

Design the network for a hyperconverged rack: topology, storage traffic, automation, and high availability.

Prerequisites

basic switching and virtualization.

Units

1. HCI overview and design ch 01–03

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2. Topology ch 04–06

data-center topologies and their trade-offs.

3. SDN, RDMA, NVMe-oF ch 07–10

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4. NFV, automation, telemetry ch 11–14

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5. High availability and scenarios ch 15–20, 23

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6. Design cases ch 21–25

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7. Green design and vendors ch 26–28

energy, outlook, vendor comparison.

8. Implementation and capstone ch 29–30

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Labs

Each lab names its environment and a pass check. Labs are not marked complete on "it ran" — the pass check has to hold.

LabWhat you doEnvironment
CNT-02ach 04 Size a leaf–spine fabricPass check: Calculation sheet vm45 min
CNT-02bch 08 SDN lab on a simulatorPass check: Policy applied sim90 min
CNT-02cch 10 NVMe-oF testPass check: Latency recorded sim60 min
CNT-02dch 30 Design review of your own HCI networkPass check: Reviewed against the checklist vm90 min

Capstone project · CAP-09

Converged Network Architecture Review · 2 weeks

A hyperconverged rack is being designed for storage and compute.

Write the design: topology, oversubscription, lossless classes, high availability, and failure cases. Defend it in a review.

Deliverables: Design document with a failure table.

Outcomes

  • I can size a leaf–spine fabric for a target bandwidth and oversubscription.
  • I can explain why storage traffic needs a lossless design.
  • I can write a high-availability plan with failure cases.

Also in

How it runs

Work through the units in order. Each unit groups the chapters of the study guide with its share of the labs. You can start any time; there is no cohort date and nothing expires.

Labs run in a VM, a container, a simulator or on real hardware, and the card above names which. Where a lab needs hardware — an RDMA NIC, a programmable switch model, an FPGA — there is a simulator fallback so you are never blocked by equipment.

Questions

Do I get a certificate?

You get a completion record for the course. Path badges and project credentials are earned by passing the labs and the project review, not by attendance.

Can my team take this together?

Yes — and if you would rather have it delivered live, with the instructor in the room, this course also exists as a scheduled live cohort. See the live dates.

How long does it take?

≈ 30 h of study including the labs. Most engineers take it part-time over a few weeks.