QuarterlyNetworking

Network readiness checklist

14 items ·3 critical ·4 warn ·7 info

Network readiness checklist

Quarterly review of the network layer (switches, routers, APs, firewalls) that underpins the cluster. Network issues account for many PVE outages; this check reduces surprises.

When to run

Quarterly as part of operational hygiene
After any network hardware change
After any unexplained outage
After any firmware upgrade

Critical3 items

Firewall rules tested from each VLAN (deny default verified)
No default passwords on switches / routers / APs
Spanning tree / loop prevention configured (no loops)

Warning4 items

Switch configuration in version control (or change-tracking)

MTU consistent end-to-end on critical paths

for h in <hops>; do echo -n "$h: "; ping -c1 -M do -s $((<mtu>-28)) $h 2>/dev/null | grep -oP "mtu \K\d+" || echo "FAIL"; done

Critical links have redundant paths (LACP, dual NICs)
Switch / router configurations backed up off-device

Info7 items

VLAN table documented with purpose and IP ranges
Trunk ports documented (PVE hosts, uplink, AP)
DNS records clean (no stale entries)
```
dig axfr @<ns> <zone>
```
DHCP scopes documented with reservation list
Inter-node latency baseline measured (and within SLA)
```
mtr -n <peer-node> --report --report-cycles 100
```
Switch SNMP monitoring configured (port errors, CRC)
Switch / router firmware current (within 2 stable releases)