Continuing in a tradition I started early this year where I take a look back at the year that just passed, I've again been very fortunate to have had an amazing year, both in my professional and personal lives. Writing this post is my way of forcing myself to stop and take notice of what I was involved in (something I'm not very good at letting myself do in the moment) and also give readers a chance to see the "me" behind the scenes. Let's go through the list!| packetmischief.ca
If you're an IT professional and you have at least a minimal awareness of what Cisco is doing in the market and you don't live under a rock, you would've heard about the major launch that took place in June: "The network. Intuitive." The anchor solution to this launch is Cisco's Software Defined Access (SDA) in which the campus network becomes automated, highly secure, and highly scalable. The launch of SDA is what's called a "Tier 1" launch where Cisco's corporate marketing muscle is fully e...| packetmischief.ca
It's funny, in my experience, OSPF is the most widely used interior gateway protocol because it "just works" and it's an IETF standard which means it inter-ops between different vendors and platforms. However, if you really start to look at how OSPF works, you realize it's actually a highly complex protocol. So on the one hand you get a protocol that likely works across your whole environment, regardless of vendor/platform, but on the other you're implementing a lot of complexity in your cont...| packetmischief.ca
Cacti is a "complete network graphing solution" according to their website. It has also been a thorn in my side for a long time. See what I did there? Thorn... because it's a cactus... never mind. When Cacti is in a steady state-when I could get it to a steady state-it was good. Not great, because there was a lot of effort to get it into what I consider "steady state", but good. The rest of the time... thorny. There are five major things that have driven me up the wall. In no particular order:| packetmischief.ca
I had just lost the RAID array that hosts my ESXi data store. I didn't yet know that's what had happened, but with some investigation, some embarrassment, and a bit of swearing, I would find out that an oversight on my part three years ago would lead to this happening.| packetmischief.ca
Happy New Year! I just realized the other day that this blog turned 5 years old in 2016. It's been a lot of fun and has paid me back for my time in terms of building my brand and being a means to explore and learn new topics. I have plans to put more focus on my writing in 2017 and reduce the friction between starting with a blank page and hitting that "Publish" button. Anyways! Here's a look back at 2016 on packetmischief.ca.| packetmischief.ca
This post has been sitting in the "drafts" folder for a while now. Clearly, since it's August and is therefore a little late to be deciding on a plan that is supposed to carry through all 12 months of 2017. Regardless, I think it's still worth sharing how I've attempted to increase the frequency of my blogging. My basic goal for 2017 is: Create more content in 12 months than I ever have before in order to a) significantly build up the depth and breadth of knowledge on my blog, b) increase my ...| packetmischief.ca