Eric Marquez

@ebmarquez
2 Followers
3 Following
9 Posts

Principal Software Engineer Lead at Microsoft. Building data center networks and automating them with AI. Hockey player, traveler, parent. Pacific Northwest based.

Blogging about networking, SONiC, EVPN, and AI-assisted infrastructure at ebmarquez.github.io

#Networking #AI #Hockey #PNW

Presented the network architecture for Azure Local's disaggregated model at the Microsoft Partner Forum today. 64 nodes, compute + storage split independently — a major leap for on-prem Azure. Lot of work to get here. 🔵 #AzureLocal #MicrosoftPartner
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/azurearcblog/azure-local-expands-to-sovereign-scale-infrastructure-with-disaggregated-deploym/4514338
Azure Local expands to sovereign-scale infrastructure with disaggregated deployments | Microsoft Community Hub

As organizations accelerate digital transformation across datacenters, sovereign environments, and edge locations, infrastructure architectures must evolve...

TECHCOMMUNITY.MICROSOFT.COM

Just shipped ai-ssh-toolkit v0.2.3 🎉

The headline fix: PTY `rows: 0` across all SSH tools. Network devices like Cisco and Arista use terminal row count to decide when to paginate with `--More--` — setting rows to 0 tells them "no paging needed" at the protocol level, before any command runs.

Also documented 3 intentional design decisions that explain the security model.

🔗 https://github.com/ebmarquez/ai-ssh-toolkit/releases/tag/v0.2.3

#MCP #NetworkAutomation #SSH #OpenSource #Cisco

Release v0.2.3 · ebmarquez/ai-ssh-toolkit

What's Changed Fixes Set PTY rows: 0 across all SSH tools to disable --More-- pagination on network devices (#74) Centralize PTY spawn options in shared SSH_PTY_OPTIONS constant (#74) Fix smoke sc...

GitHub

Me to Copilot during an 8-hour VXLAN troubleshooting session: LEARN DAMMIT LEARN

https://ebmarquez.github.io/posts/working-with-ai-when-its-frustrating-vxlan-investigation/

#networking #AI #GitHubCopilot

Working With AI When It’s Frustrating: Lessons from a VXLAN Investigation

What a multi-hop PXE failure taught me about managing AI as a troubleshooting partner — not a magic solution.

Eric Marquez

I got tired of solving the same credential SSH problem in every Copilot session. So I extracted it into a proper MCP server. Bitwarden, Azure Key Vault, or env vars — pick your backend. Works with Copilot CLI, Claude, ChatGPT.

https://github.com/ebmarquez/ai-ssh-toolkit

#networking #AI #OpenSource

Interesting debate on AI BGP this week. The "just use FRR" take is right for production. But sometimes you don't need every feature. A stripped-down implementation for a specific use case isn't reinventing the wheel — it's using the right size tool.

https://blog.ipspace.net/2026/02/ai-speaking-bgp/

On AI Agents Speaking BGP « ipSpace.net blog

I guess your LinkedIn feed is as full of AI nonsense as mine is, so I usually just skip all that posturing. However, every now and then, I stumble upon an idea that makes sense… until you start to dig deeper into it. There was this post about AI agents speaking BGP with an associated GitHub repo, so I could go take a look at what it’s all about. The proof-of-concept (so the post author) has two components:

Gave a customer a recommendation. They didn't like it, went around me. Got the same answer everywhere else. It landed back on my desk. Sometimes people don't want advice — they want permission.

Handed an AI a subnet and two blank switches. It planned the IPs, deployed BGP, and got it almost right. Almost. Still impressed.

https://ebmarquez.github.io/posts/heres-a-25-figure-out-the-address-plan/

#networking #SONiC #AI

Here’s a /26 — Figure Out the Address Plan

I handed GitHub Copilot a /26 subnet and told it to plan IP addressing for a two-switch iBGP fabric with spine uplinks. Then we deployed it. Here’s what happened.

Eric Marquez

Taught Copilot to SSH into my SONiC switches through a serial console server. It figured out the CLI on its own. Wrote up how it went.

https://ebmarquez.github.io/posts/hey-copilot-can-you-ssh-into-a-switch/

#networking #SONiC #AI

Hey Copilot, Can You SSH Into a Switch?

What happens when you point an AI at two factory-fresh SONiC switches and say ‘figure it out’ — a real-world experiment in AI-assisted network discovery.

Eric Marquez

Been explaining VRFs to engineers a lot lately. Figured I'd just write it down.

https://ebmarquez.github.io/posts/what-are-vrfs-and-how-they-work/

#networking

What Are VRFs and How They Work

A practical, no-nonsense guide to Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) for engineers who know networking but haven’t clicked with VRFs yet.

Eric Marquez