Just Thoughts

I simply love my network

Though it drives me crazy and it leaves me baffled and crazed at times, but I can’t help but smile when I remember that all of it, is mine.

Each time I think I’ve figured it all out, something new comes along, something I missed, and I say now I understand, it all makes sense now, but then it doesn’t and I’m lost again!

My network, from the two core switches, Papa and Mama, to their little children, edge switches, spanning our building across all floors. Sharing love and communication through long colourful cables. Not only do Papa and Mama have the means to run the show and manage their kids, but the smooth flow will continue even if either Papa or Mama went down for a nap

First thing in the morning, I check the reports, how is my baby today. Though I have a spoiled brat, which is the backup, going through a phase, a rebellious one that I can’t understand, thankfully I call in this amazing guy, the shrink, aka support, and he makes it all better

No you don’t understand, you’re in the wrong VLAN. This network isn’t routed to the inside!

Three levels of routing, switch level, firewall level and router level. Aha, take a look at the illustrations, does it make sense to you. No, why, here let me explain one more time. This is my network and I’ll make you understand.

Let’s take it up a notch and introduce you to the bodyguards, we have the elegant twins protecting the network and then another pair tucked safely inside the cores and all our servers are placed behind, not paranoid just being extra cautious

We have the fancy voice infrastructure, with our VoIP, voice mails, faxes and cool messengers.

The neatly distributed IPs, based on buildings, floor and function. It’s the address we follow, gimme the IP, go check this building that floor.

Brings joy to my heart when something new comes along, though not always. When that unwelcomed, so called IPS weaselled its way in, WTH, how do you manage this thing! Turn it off, put it in monitoring mode, I don’t like devices I totally don’t understand, we don’t speak the same language, them and I and frankly I don’t have the time, so put it aside.

Virtualization, a light in my dull word, I go high everytime, I take something physical and magically virtualize it. Just a click of a mouse and all is done, multiple copies and snapshots of different states. Machines and servers come to life by creating and cloning. Resources are distributed, machines have the freedom to roam around looking for more resources whenever needed Simply delicious.

I love our blade center, the blades look alien-like, but I adore it because of its management, I can remotely format Though I can’t have more sessions when I want to but something will come up in the future.

The time we decided to renovate our datacenter, re-cable and organize the server cabinets! Almost falling under shaking floor tiles. The cabling industry have come so far, management cables that are just plugged into patch panels. It’s loads of work, but it’s worth it

You forget what servers you have, some are so old they don’t even have USB ports! Move that brick out of here, I say.

Management applications that keep an eye on everything and report back when something is wrong or abnormal.

The whole company is nicely coated with wireless, for different purposes, business, guest and voice, ain’t this grand

I can go on and on about what we have, we are one big family, we don’t always get along, on times I get this feeling that something is wrong, even if I’m miles away, so I VPN to work and check everything out and sometimes I just ignore that feeling and deal with it in the morning

My network, it’s growing, it’s expanding, some hardware has moved out, some retired, some got an upgrade, you try to explain it all with drawings and documentation but you never get it entirely until you get your hands dirty Even then keep your mind open for the no sense at all surprises.

All in all, I simply LOVE my network