tallyrich · Network Engineer Senior · ✭✭✭✭✭

marcoswithanoh I'm not generally a whiner, but this has gone all over the board today. I finally answered, based upon what the current look was and Red X. Rrrr.

Good troubleshooting skills are what separate the excellent from the average. Anyone (relatively speaking) can run a well functioning network - it's when things go awry that skills are really needed. It reminds me of the old story (and there are a ton of variations) where the consultant is called in to fix some expensive…

In 1999 I worked for the State of Florida and my agency purchased a ton of multi-funciton printer/copier/scanner/coffeemaker/vacuum/etc. machines. They were sold on the idea of making the entire operation paperless - remember that pipe dream - well after 6 months in the office the company finally admitted that the all the…

I like the bracket battles - this should be fun.

Umm, of course - seems in most peoples minds Virtual=free. Every environment that I've been in has had this mentality - "Oh, just build a VM for that!"

I don't deal with it much myself, but from what I've heard if the connection to the cloud is down you lose a lot of functionality (couldn't say what) so I don't really understand the reason to go hybrid.

Agreed and with some "skin in the game" users take better care of their machines. I've worked places with "repeat offenders" that had their machines replaced because of "accidents" several times in the life of the machine. I'm not saying that accidents don't happen and I don't think that everyone should necessarily be…

Nice post - I generally try to keep my nose out of SQL, but you make it a bit less scary.

All good points. Our leadership has made great strides with our customer (I work for a company that provides EMR software and IT services to hospitals) in addressing each of these areas and keeping them in the forefront before they become issues. In so many IT "shops" the squeaky wheel is what gets the grease and important…

Just looked carefully at the photo. Yes, Yes, Yes, sign me up Automatic Pancake Maker. Sounds like a good mission item or Thwack Store item. Can you imagine sitting that right next to your coffee maker with both of them have built-in timers! Wow, wake up to the smell of fresh coffee and hot pancakes.

First those popcorn balls look delicious. This business is always changing and always a challenge. If you can't handle change and challenges this is not the place for you. Thanks for the interesting post.

I would love to have a real one of todays answer, but a collection of replicas would be more likely and within my ability to acquire.

My question about this and IT in general - why is it that businesses take CapEx and OpEx so differently? I remember when Hardware and Software support was generally 10% of the cost of the product. Now it's generally 20%. Why, because so many companies have settled into the mode of saving money on purchases and letting…

Good information and I think the categorization is one of the most important elements. How many times, in IT, have you heard the statements; "Just back up everything." or "just encrypt everything" Proper classifications will lead to better protection, greater efficiency and cost savings. Not to mention you will know what…

Good article - that point of blameless is so critical. I've seen environments where management encourages people to hide things. If a person feels that they are going to be brought into the "high carpet" for an incident they are more likely to try and hide it. There is a big difference between getting in trouble and being…

Good article. I'm currently supporting a government agency and I see big gaps in communication. I've only been supporting them for about 6 months and I've been surprised how many times the coders come to the network team with new requirements and they need them "tonight - because we are going live."

I'm big on documentation and working as a consultant working with an Engineering Firm. Currently they have me stationed at a state agency and I've been really pushing for more documentation. I've been instrumental in implementing several forms and a lot of Visio diagrams. One of the people that I'm training is doing a lot…

Good explanation, SQL is one of those things that gets into many networks without the requisite staff to properly support it and a LOT of the issues arise from that.

I love how much interaction this brings to the community.

Excellent points and great reminders of what we should be doing.

EDS - I did 12 years with them (and a couple with HP after the acquisition)

Love the envelope theory - sometimes it is quite true.

Congrats rhrohde​ and rwagner​

Rrrrr, read carefully, choose carefully and the number that shows along with the Red X doesn't match the number that I thought I choose. Rrrr

We are using NetScalers here and this would be valuable.

Your 3 simple questions is a great place to start. I think a lot of monitoring happens, just because. There are cases where you legitimately need to monitor every port on a switch, but in many cases you only need to monitor the uplinks and a few key interfaces. Neither case is right or wrong. It clearly depends upon the…

Agreed "blaming one another doesn’t solve anything" but there's such a rich tradition in the blame game. I work with a very well functioning infrastructure team, but still have difficulties with the DBAs and the Applications groups. What I've found is that the infrastructure group is very good about accepting…

Cliche's allow us to "summarize" things, but are only true some of the times. I like your use of the word Trite - it certainly summarizes the thinking. I wish more managers (and yes us underlings are also responsible) would strive for best rather than cliche's.

Agreed. The downside is that it makes it even harder to get management to buy into test environments for all the various applications.

We don't use this tool as much as we should be, but I like some of the things that may be coming along. Especially the positive/negative matching.