February – A busy month indeed!

Wow, what a busy month this has been!

So I started my new job on February 1st and thus far, everything has been really great.

My new coworkers are very friendly and helpful.

I’ve spent the better part of february, trying to get to grips with the SP network I will be focusing on from now on. Im still not where I want to be yet, but im getting there. One of the guys I will be working very closely with, started cleaning up the network when he was hired 9 months ago and he’s done a really great job with what he’s had to work with.

There are still some work to be done however, which is the very reason they have hired me and another very good friend of mine. A well run network is a dynamic beast which needs to be tamed. On top of that, the company growth has been around 30% a year, so alot of structure and processes needs to come with that growth, which is where I can really make a difference.

I’ve also had the good fortune of being selected as a 2016 Cisco Champion, which was a very nice surprise. I tried to squeeze in a few good technical posts last year, which I hope was useful to someone on the net. I’ve attended a few briefings so far, but they have mainly been about topics which I dont know enough about to offer any commentary on (UCS for example). Im hoping they are working on something in the routing realm as well 🙂

So for 2016, my primary objective is as previously stated, the CCDE certification.

Next month is Jeremy Filliben’s CCDE bootcamp, which I will be attending. I hope this will kick my butt into gear (I knew the change of jobs would hit my CCDE preparation). Im still aiming for a shot at the practical in late August.

Our Slack study group (Which Daniel Dib and I started) has grown quite a bit and includes a fair number of experts in different areas. If you are serious about CCDE or network design in general, dont be shy to mail me for an invite.

There are however, technologies which I also want to be familiar with to the level of blogging about them.

These include:

– Practical Segment Routing.

– Cisco’s iWAN solution.

– A deep knowledge of the ASR9K platform.

– Programmability (Python, API’s, etc.).

Now, back to work I go 🙂

/Kim