Network

My Animosity Toward Artificial Intelligence

10/30/18 In my previous posts, I talked about the basics of AI in relation to network and systems management as well as why I love it. This post isn’t going to be as optimistic abo…

Directions

10/29/18 My wife called me for the third time, and I could hear that she was working hard to remain calm but was undeniably at the end of her rope. She had missed the freeway exit.…

Where Is Your Configuration Source of Truth?

10/25/18 Ask a good server engineer where their server configuration is defined and the answer will likely be something similar to In my Puppet manifests. Ask a network administrat…

My Affection for AI

10/24/18 In my last post, I mentioned one of the basic use cases for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in a modern network. AI can be utilized to not only bridge the informational gaps …

Am I Automating Myself Out of a Job?

10/24/18 Is our contribution measured by what we’re doing or how we’re doing it? Are we providing value or are we just getting caught up in what’s exciting? How do we ensure that w…

Monitoring, Tracing, and Observability: Choose Two?

10/19/18 While it’s inevitable that new technologies usually create new business opportunities, they also often create new problems for IT pros to solve. It’s a natural cycle for o…

Death by a Thousand Cuts – A Driver for Network Automation

10/19/18 At what point does the frequency and volume of “it will only take a second to change” become too much to bear and force us to adopt a network automation strategy? Where is…

What I Did (and Learned) On My Coding Vacation

10/17/18 For THWACKcamp 2018, I had a chance to return to a task/skill I haven’t really done much of in a while: programming. That may be a surprise for some people, so let me expl…

Not Another AI Post…

10/10/18 Modern network and systems engineers have a lot to deal with. Things like overlapping roles, constantly changing client devices, and new applications popping up daily crea…

To Create Great Products, Optimization is Just as Important as Innovation

10/01/18 I left academia for the so-called real world in the late 90s because nothing seemed more exciting than the tech industry, which, at the time, was turning the world upside-…

Getting Out Of Infrastructure Mode

09/21/18 Have you talked to your users lately? Here’s a fun task for you this week or next: Take one of your most problematic users out to coffee. Just tell them you’re going to gr…

Networking Without Firewalls

09/19/18 We have all heard the saying “It’s who you know, not what you know.” There is truth in the statement. Your personal network can help you succeed in your career and take yo…