scottm · Consulting Network Engineer · ✭✭✭✭✭

Knowing all the end user devices is probably unrealistic for any size of network. Knowing (and by knowing, I really mean "documented somewhere") the infrastructure devices is a must, though I can see that being difficult on very large networks. Of course, the largest networks are where that documentation becomes most…

Agreed. Inter-team/department communications seems to be a problem in almost every organization. Between politics and personalities, there's plenty of room to add friction.

Nice outline! Thanks for collecting that. I've filed it away in my Evernote for future pondering...

This goes along with "do you test your backups?" I have NCM send me a login failure report weekly so I can see what devices it can't get into. That said, I should probably configure a report to tell me the last config download or something similar.

Organizations often pay lip service to wanting documentation but don't really give engineers the time to actually write it. That said, I would have to say that the biggest hurdle to writing good documentation is primarily that it's not something that tends to be taught in our field. It's seen as boring and uninteresting…

Thanks! Totally agree on your monitoring comment, too.

I would argue that network management is not really impacted by BYOD in the ways you imply. I should hope that the infrastructure is stable and known, regardless of your organizations stance on BYOD. BYOD is about devices that access the network, not about the infrastructure that serves those devices. BYOD may change the…

I really like these ideas, particularly the clear indication of the severity level right on the subject line that is also easy to build into email handling rules. Thanks for sharing!

Standardization is the best way to reduce time to identify and resolve. It also makes it a lot easier for a team of engineers to share the workload. If everyone isn't building things the same way whenever possible, then you end up spending time trying to understand how some portion of the network is configured before you…

Thanks!

Very nice. QoS is a big deal that is often overlooked and can be difficult to apply consistently across the enterprise, especially with multiple vendors and models!

Unless, of course, you are working with SQL 2005…

This also doesn't take into account high availability. This is a lot stickier to figure out when you have load balanced routes or valid alternate routes that won't show up until there is a failure. Dependencies in simple networks are easy, but in more complex topologies it gets sticky very quickly. Start throwing SP…

My DBA liked this solution to the alert. He did not think it was a good idea to defrag master. I've seen varying opinions on that, but this solution is what worked for me.

This is my biggest annoyance, too. I really need to set up dependencies and keep putting it off because it's painfully time consuming.

1.3.6.1.4.1.9.1.1229 Cisco 3560X, WS-C3560X-48P

Cisco IEGSM, Cisco CIGESM Blade Switch for IBM, 1-31-2009, 4-30-2012, EOL/EOS for the Cisco CIGESM Blade Switch for IBM [Cisco Switch Modules for IBM] - Cisco Systems Cisco WAE-574, Cisco Wide Area Virtualization Engine 574, 8-17-2012, 8-31-2017, End-of-Sale and End-of-Life Announcement for the Cisco WAVE 274, 474, 574 and…

Shutting down the Solarwinds SFTP/SCP and TFTP services resolved this error for me.