Anyone have reading suggestions for an operationally minded infrastructure engineer who is paranoid about security and hates breaking production but still wants to take the IPv6 plunge?
For preparing your applications for the eventual flip-the-switch transition; pay particular attention to sections 4.2, which describes a strategy (supported by Linux) for handing off the grunt-work of dual-stack to the kernel while making your userspace code only speak IPv6: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4038
For a quick overview of the process of making your infrastructure dual-stack (with an aim to eventually phase out IPv4); note that most of the burden is on your networking-equipment vendor to make this work, unless you make your layer-3 equipment in-house. So it's mostly a deployment challenge, rather than a development challenge. http://www.networkworld.com/article/2285078/tech-primers/ipv...
If I might recommend a good tunnel broker for allowing you to deploy IPv6 internally and get connectivity to the global v6 internet even without ISP support, take a look at Hurricane Electric.
Turn it on in your office first, then deploy to production. You'll gain working experience by turning up your office first. Experience with basic tools like netstat (you need -w now), experience with SLAAC and DHCP lite, quickly reading v6 addresses in :: notation, getting familiar with link local addresses (What do you mean every default router in the company is fe80::1?), etc.
For a quick overview of the process of making your infrastructure dual-stack (with an aim to eventually phase out IPv4); note that most of the burden is on your networking-equipment vendor to make this work, unless you make your layer-3 equipment in-house. So it's mostly a deployment challenge, rather than a development challenge. http://www.networkworld.com/article/2285078/tech-primers/ipv...
If I might recommend a good tunnel broker for allowing you to deploy IPv6 internally and get connectivity to the global v6 internet even without ISP support, take a look at Hurricane Electric.