that1guy15

Yeah Im not a big fan of bootcamps. The only use I can see them having is the last mile or final prep. If your going to a bootcamp to learn you are doing it wrong.

Nice!

Just like most education, certifications give you what you put into them . I agree I have seen people cert'ed up but couldn't do or explain basic concepts. Makes you wonder. For me certifications are what drive me to grow and learn and I use them as a tool. But I will never use my certs as a way to show my knowledge. Its a…

It still baffles me that in today's world IT departments still go without any monitoring. To me even basic ping testing is not acceptable but you still see it...

Very good points!

That's a really good point and one I haven't really thought about. I guess I usually rely on my apps team to understand this. So who does this responsibility usually fall under from your prospective?

HA! kinda ironic for this post... This morning we lost one of several PDUs in our DC which should not have been a problem. BUT several racks and dual homed services went down with it. Cause? Rack PDUs or devices themselves were dual connected to that one PDU and not distributed between A side and B side. Sometimes all the…

great points!

These are good points and also why I always keep my network docs on my laptop and thumb drive. I also keep config guides, topologies, production version of IOS. Never know when you wont have internet to look something up. We are also developing a wiki which can be downloaded to your local system so you have it in…

Always has with this network. Ive been here for less than a year and I find fun stuff like that all the time. "What The!!" is uttered by me on a regular basis

Dont forget if you cant be replaced you cant be promoted.

Up until recently I always made my diagrams plotter size so I could do this. It was a little annoying having to zoom in and out but I loved having a printed out version. I dont have access to a plotter anymore so it dosent make sense to do it this way. I do miss my geeky network diagram posters though...

Great idea. I think Ill play around with that on my current network and see how it goes.

So what is everyones strategy for motivating and pushing those not willing to grow? For me I try and keep my teammates involved with as much as possible so they are kinda forced into the knowledge. But for mentoring and personal growth if you wont put in the leg work and push yourself Im not going to waste my energy.

Your completely right, the human error aspect is one that is overlooked a lot.

Im a VERY visual person, even more so when the network starts getting complex. When I first started my current role I had to use almost half my whiteboard to map out traffic flows and WAN setup for some changes. The detail is great and I still have not moved it off the whiteboard and into Visio with the rest of the…

Could not agree more. I recognized certs from the get-go as a way to push myself and learn the topics. But just because you have cert XYZ dosent mean you know the subject.

Very true. Also dont forget that the same is true for getting team buy-in and keeping them using it regularly. The best NMS in the world is useless when your teammates dont know how to login and check status during a core meltdown and your on vacation.

Nice! Yeah internal wikis seem to be a pretty popular option.

Yeah my whole career up until my current job used Excel spreadsheets and if done right did a great job. Right now we have a half-baked infoblox setup. Im thinking the old admins did not have a full understanding of the depth it would take to fully implement Infoblox and didnt get around to anything outside of turning them…

My next post is circling around this topic.

IPv6 will become a must when either customers demand it from their products or services companies push it as a requirement. Once people are forced to translate between a v4 infrastructure and the v6 world services will start turning to crap. Once the CEO of XYZ cant surf cat videos or have a decent cross-country webEx…

or how about a jpg image taken of a whiteboard several months ago when we drew it out. I agree with you on revision dates. Either place it inside the visio or in the file name. I prefer in the file name so you know how old it is before opening.

Yeah I think these types of tools are the grandfather of this stuff. Up until now everyone who needs to manage a large number of devices must develop or deploy some sort of script or tool to automate changes. Usually it involves hooking in via SNMP or SSH/Telnet logging in and making the changes. Companies now are opening…

Interesting on the EOD role. Is your shop a blend of IT or is it focused in on a specific area like networking or server admin? I could see this being an issue with a mixed team as you really dont want me messing around with Exchange. I would think this could cause inconsistencies. If Im wrong on this how have you worked…

This is a good point and I dont disagree with this at all. Sometimes requirements drive complexity. I'd be curious to know what most VAR/Contractors run into. Do you walk in and fully design and build based off customers needs or are you handed a general design w/ requirements and asked to make it happen?

Yeah I think its a progression. Each time you build a diagram you gain a little more and over time you start producing high quality work quickly.

Do you like it? how did it come out?

This is where I can see it taking on a market such as service providers. My pie in the sky view of how SDN/Network automation could be: customer A calls SP XYZ (or does it online through a web tool) and purchases cloud services for an entire infrastructure. Purchase is executed then the client is spun up with a few clicks…

Great insight!! Thanks