Gary A Donahue - Arista Warrior: A Real-World Guide to Understanding Arista Products and EOS

This book is not an Arista manual. I will not go into the details of every permutation of every command, nor will I go into painful detail of default timers or counters or priorities or any of that boring stuff. The purpose of this book is to get you up and running with an Arista switch, or even a data center full of them. Whats more, this book aims to explain Arista-specific features in great detail; however, it might not go into such detail on other topics such as explaining VLANs, routers, and how to configure NTP, because Ive covered those topics at length in Network Warrior. I will go into detail if a topic is being introduced here that wasnt covered in Network Warrior, such as Multiple Spanning Tree (MST) or Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP). Where possible, I have concentrated on what makes Arista switches great. In short, if you want to learn about networking, pick up Network Warrior. If you want to know why Arista is stealing market share from all of the other networking equipment vendors (and continues to do so six years after the first edition was published), buy this book.

This book is intended for use by anyone familiar with networking from any vendors environment, but most likely from one with that industry-standard command-line interface (CLI) we all know, who is interested in learning more about Arista switches. Anyone with entry-level networking certification (or greater) knowledge should benefit from this book, but the person who will get the most from this book is the entrenched admin, engineer, or architect who has been tasked with building an Arista network. My goal in writing Arista Warrior is to explain complex ideas in an easy-to-understand manner. Ive taught many classes on Arista switches, and I see trepidation and fear of the unknown in students when the class begins. By the end of the class, I have students asking when the next class will be available and if I can get them Arista T-shirts. In the first printing of this book, I commented that I couldnt get shirts. Now that I work for Arista, I can tell you that if you take one of my classes, you might get a T-shirt! I hope you will find this book similarly informative, lack of free vendor swag notwithstanding.

As I wrote in Network Warrior, I have noticed over the years that people in the computer, networking, and telecom industries are often misinformed about the basics of these disciplines. I believe that in many cases, this is the result of poor teaching or the use of reference material that does not convey complex concepts well. With this book, I hope to show people how easy some of these concepts are. Of course, as I like to say, Its easy when you know how, so I have tried very hard to help anyone who picks up my book understand the ideas contained herein.

Lets be brutally honest; most technology books suck. What drew me to OReilly in the first place is that most of theirs dont. From the feedback Ive received over the years since first writing Network Warrior, it has become clear to me that many of my readers agree. I hope that this book is as easy to read as my previous works, and at least as entertaining. For those of you who have met me during one my classes, I apologize in advance for the fact that youll hear my voice in your head as you read. As someone whos lived his entire life with my own voice in my head, I know that nobody wants that.