Packet Pushers - Community Show

John, Derek, Mike, and Steven are back with the Infotrek podcast to finish up the topic of small shop design (hear part 1 here), but only after they review the weekly news: Goodbye Yahoo, hello Openstack alternate to vBlock, and Google apparently fails at config automation.

[Editor’s note: This episode was originally recorded in April, but technical issues prevented it from being posted on Packet Pushers until June, making the news out of date. That’s on us, not the podcast hosts.]

Your Hosts:

John W. Kerns is a network and systems engineer based in the Los Angeles/San Diego area. His background is in two traditionally stovepiped skill sets: systems administration and switching/routing/security. Most of his time is spent as an implementation engineer for a medium-sized VAR. You can visit his blog at blog.packetsar.com or follow him on Twitter at @PackeTsar.

Derek Pocoroba is a Director of Enterprise Networking in the San Diego area. His background is heavy in enterprise networking and he holds CCIE #18559 Routing & Switching. Derek spends much of his time as a solutions architect, focusing on network architecture and design for his customers. You can visit his blog on PacketPushers and LinkedIN or follow him on Twitter at @dpocoroba.

Mike Aossey is a Director of Practice Management in the Orange County, CA area. His background spans across many different technologies in IT, but he focuses mostly on collaboration and programming. Mike spends his time day to day overseeing SMEs and architecting VoIP solutions. You can visit his blog on www.aossey.net or follow his rants on Twitter at @aossey.

Steven Sedory is a small business owner based out of Chino California. His company, Vertical Computers, provides managed IT services, as well has VoIP and cloud hosting solutions. His background is in systems administration and small business systems architecture. You can visit his website at verticalcomputers.com.

Show Notes:

* Compute (Hyper-V? VMWare? Maybe KVM?)

* Storage (FreeNAS and OpenFiler can be good options)

* Collaboration (IM, Email, VOIP…)

* Security (Just go find PacketPushers Show 260 with Jay Swan)

In an previous episode of The Next Level we looked at the concept of mindfulness, its use for stress release and performance improvement, how mindfulness relates to IT, and whether the practice can (or should) be separated from its religious roots.

On today’s episode we extend the discussion about the benefits of mindfulness in the context of an IT profession, including how it can improve interactions with colleagues, positively affect decision-making, and boost work performance.

Our guest is Brian Harrington, IT Manager and podcaster. You can follow him on Twitter, and check out his podcasts Literally Figuratively Speaking (explicit content) and The Clecast.

Small businesses are typically the step children of the IT world; they don’t receive enough attention from professionals and typically suffer from bad design practices.

In this episode of Infotrek, your hosts join forces with guest Steven Sedory to talk about many of these bad practices and explore favorable alternatives for designing a good network for a small business.

Your Hosts:

John W Kerns is a network and systems engineer based in the Los Angeles/San Diego area. His background is in two traditionally stovepiped skill sets: systems administration and switching/routing/security. He spends most of his time as an implementation engineer for a medium sized VAR. Visit his blog at blog.packetsar.com or follow him on Twitter @PackeTsar.

Derek Pocoroba is a Director of Enterprise Networking in the San Diego area. His background is heavy in enterprise networking and he holds CCIE #18559 Routing & Switching. Derek spends much of his time as a solutions architect, focusing on network architecture and design for his customers. Visit his blog on PacketPushers and LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter @dpocoroba.

Mike Aossey is a Director of Practice Management in Orange County, CA. His background spans many different technologies in IT, but he focuses mostly on collaboration and programming. Mike oversees SMEs and architects VoIP solutions. Visit his blog on www.aossey.net or follow his rants on Twitter @aossey.

Steven Sedory is a small business owner based out of Chino, California. His company, Vertical Computers, provides managed IT services, as well has VoIP and cloud hosting solutions. His background is in systems administration and small business systems architecture. Visit his website at verticalcomputers.com.

Newsy News

Windows 10 to include user-mode Ubuntu code with NT kernel. Native bash in Windows – InformationWeek

Uber and DoD offer “bug bounties” to hackers who can find vulnerabilities – CNBC

Oracle introduces “Cloud at Customer”. New trend for public cloud options? – InformationWeek

Show Topic: Small Shop Design Part 1

* Internet (Small or big pipe? Bigger if cloud is used a lot)

* Core Networking (Stack, chassis, 10G?)

* Wireless (Latest and greatest or just good enough?)

* Identity Management (Just use Active Directory. Save the headache)

Agile is a set of principles for software development. If you’ve ever worked with developers or DevOps professionals you’ve probably encountered Agile terminology.

While Agile emerged in the software discipline, its values and goals can be generally applied in other contexts. This episode explores how to use Agile concepts for IT infrastructure projects and to foster better collaboration.

Today’s guest is James Rhodes III, a delivery lead who has been in the IT industry since the late ’80s. He has experience in software, networking, and project management. He’s currently managing a team of infrastructure engineers.

Show Notes:

Agile Principles

* Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

* Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.

* Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.

* Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

* Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

* The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

* Working software is the primary measure of progress.

* Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

* Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.

* Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.

* The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

* At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Agile Terms

* Burndown Chart

* Retrospective

* Task Box

* User Stories

Programming is a hot topic in the networking and infrastructure engineering world today, but why? Are engineers going to be required to learn how to write software? How does the industry expect to benefit from engineers having programming skills?

In this Infotrek episode, after covering the weekly news items, we talk about the future of engineer skill sets and who may or may not benefit from learning how to write code.

Your Hosts:

John W Kerns is a Hybrid Engineer focused on network and data center (systems, virtualization, etc.) technologies.

Derek Pocoroba, CCIE 18559, is the Director of Enterprise Networking and focuses on network architecture and design for customers.

Mike Aossey is the Director of Practice Management and works day to day overseeing SMEs and architecting VoIP solutions.

John, Derek, and Mike are all colleagues at a VAR based in Southern California.

Newsy News

HP announces new hyperconverged system – The Register

Apple is getting out of the public cloud and building its own infrastructure – Venture Beat

EMC wins suit against Pure over dedupe patent – EWeek

Google talks about its home grown load balancers – EWeek

Google shares software network load balancer design – Google Cloud Platform Blog

Topic: Getting Started in Programming

* Everybody is talking about it. What is the big deal?

* Why would an infrastructure engineer be interested in programming?

* What types of engineers would benefit the most from learning it? Who would benefit least?

* What languages are best for different types of engineers? Any languages that have little value?

* What will the next generation of infrastructure engineer skill sets look like?

* Where are some good places to start learning?

Depending on who you talk to, mindfulness can mean a lot of things, ranging from a rigorous form of Buddhist meditation and spiritual practice to the latest self-help buzzword.

Evidence shows that mindfulness practice can be a useful way to help reduce stress and improve attention and focus. That sounds pretty useful in a high-stress and high-stakes career like IT.

During this episode we interview Buddhist practitioner and security architect Michele Chubirka (@MrsYisWhy) of the Postmodern Security blog to identify the origins of mindfulness and determine whether the utilitarian benefits can, or should, be separated from the spiritual context.

This episode also aims to dispel common misconceptions about mindfulness with examples from Bhante Henepola Gunaratana’s highly reviewed book, “Mindfulness in Plain English.”

Tune in for sanity checks from listeners like you as we discuss case studies and talk about how mindfulness relates to optimizing your performance in work and life.

Sanity Check:

If you find yourself frustrated or scratching your head about something IT management is doing and want to ask about it, send us an email at [email protected]. All sources will be kept confidential and real names will never be used on the air.

Welcome to The Next Level! It’s common for IT pros to ponder alternatives to traditional employment, whether by being a freelancer or starting a business.

On paper it sounds great: Set your own hours, be your own boss, and live by your wits and guile instead of running on the same old corporate treadmill.

But there are also downsides and risks, including irregular income; new responsibilities to grow your business; and a lot more paperwork for billing, taxes, and administration.

On today’s episode we discuss the pleasures and perils of life as an employee, freelancer, and entrepreneur.

Joining us to share their experiences in these roles are Ben Whaley, founder of the consultancy WhaleTech and co-author of the UNIX & Linux System Administration Handbook; and Keith Townsend, Principal of The CTO Advisor and host of The CTO Advisor podcast.

Links:

For more on Ben Whaley, check out:

WhaleTech.co

Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook (Book)

Linux System Administration LiveLessons (Video Training)

Linux Web Operations LiveLessons (Video Training)

For more from Keith Townsend, check out:

The CTO Advisor (Blog)

The CTO Advisor Podcast

Welcome to Infotrek, the newest podcast in the Packet Pushers Community Channel!

Infrastructure engineers think about and deal with redundancy every day. We implement it on everything we touch without considering its inefficiencies, complexity, and whether we should even be using it in a particular situation.

In this episode, after talking over some news items, John, Derek, and Mike dive into what redundancy really is, why we use it, when to not use it, and implementation challenges.

Your Hosts:

John W Kerns is a Hybrid Engineer focused on network and data center (systems, virtualization, etc.) technologies.

Derek Pocoroba, CCIE 18559, is the Director of Enterprise Networking and focuses on network architecture and design for customers.

Mike Aossey is the Director of Practice Management and works day to day overseeing SMEs and architecting VoIP solutions.

John, Derek, and Mike are all colleagues at a VAR based in Southern California.

Newsy News:

Oracle buys Ravello – Fortune

Cisco flexes its HyperFlex hyperconverged muscles – The Register

AT&T will start selling you cable TV over the Internet – CNN

The Future Of Wi-Fi Is 10,000 Times More Energy Efficient – Wired

Show Topic: Redundancy

-What is infrastructure redundancy and why is it important?

-When is redundancy necessary?

-When is it appropriate to not use it?

-How is it usually implemented?

-What are typical implementation challenges?

* N+1 is very inefficient when N=1 (you can only use 50% capacity)

* As N becomes larger, a N+1 redundancy model becomes more efficient

-Is nested redundancy necessary?

* For example, dual supervisors in a pair of chassis in VSS

* Dual power supplies in a failover device pair

-How can redundancy be tested after it is implemented?

* What are typical problems found during testing?

To maximize the value that IT adds to our organizations, it’s critical for us to be cognizant of business requirements and to focus our technology capabilities on meeting them.

It can be hard to keep this top of mind when racing against the clock to fix a network outage or meet a big project deadline.

So right now, while you are listening to The Next Level, we’re going to hone in on the business end of IT and get strategies for how technology can be better put to business use.

Today we are joined by Denise Donohue and Russ White, the authors of The Art of Network Architecture: Business-Driven Design. This well-reviewed book provides unique insights into modern network design models that put the business needs at the center of a network architecture.

Denise Donohue is a Business Architect at NetCraftsmen, Cisco Press author, and CCIE. Follow Denise on Twitter and check out her posts at NetCrafstmen. Russ White is a Network Architect, author, CCIE, CCDE, and CCAR. You can follow Russ on Twitter or check out his blog ntwrk.guru.

Show Notes:

-Breaking down silos

* Learning to ask questions

* Engineers need to broaden our knowledge

-Focus on the problem

* What are you trying to solve?

* Don’t just fight the last war – create new ways to fight

* Plan to move out of your comfort zone. This applies to the whole business, not just specific engineers. This is a culture issue that takes time

-Think seriously about when the technology pushes your business architecture

-Evaluate technologies not just based on what’s new, but also where you want to concentrate your internal efforts. Is this the right time to take the time and energy change your processes?

* Be nimble as a business – as technology changes, you’re going to have to change the way your business does business

* Take control of the flow of technology in your network (build your own/minimize feature set so that can use any vendor)

* Outsource IT – move everything to the cloud. Still takes network to get there, but is much simpler than building a data center, and buffers you from technology changes in the data center

-Remember that you are an IT company no matter what your business does.

Welcome to The Next Level! Most of us agree that continued training is critical to keeping up with new technology and advancing our careers. For instance, Datanauts 21 talked about how to beat skills entropy.

In this episode we’ll expand on that subject, and talk about it from the manager and trainer perspective. Joining us today is Colleen Morrissey, Senior Network Engineer and Adjunct Lecturer. You can follow her on Twitter at @colleencmw.

We discuss:

* Cisco Academy/Computer science courses

* Certification

* Reading

* Mentorship

* Hands-on experience

* Practicing labs

* Attending conferences

* Creating solution and network designs

* Podcasts (ISC2 counts as CPE, lol)

And special thanks to Tom Willner, who composed song “All We’ve Learned at Rensselaer” that we used at the end of the show. You can find out more about Tom, and hear more of his music, at tomwillner.com.

Sanity Check

Our Sanity Check segment tackles management questions from real engineers and IT pros. If you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming segment, send an email to [email protected] or check out our survey.