Hey Everyone!
My name is Ryan Booth and I’ve been given the opportunity to post as an Ambassador focusing in on the Network Management section of Thwack. I'm excited to get the opportunity to bounce my thoughts and ideas off everyone and look forward to the conversations.
The overall theme for my posts will be the growing complexity of networks and how to still keep things simple (aka KISS).
Everyone knows K.I.S.S as Keep It Simple Stupid and it’s something I push with every change, design, and project. Networks are getting increasingly complex with everything from converged storage/data networking to automated workload migrations in a virtualized environment. BYOD, mobile devices, and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) are also making the enterprise environment super crazy.
So my question is: How do you balance increasing complexity in your network but still maintain simplicity?
Here are several open-ended questions to get the conversation going:
- What makes more sense, five 9’s and High Availability (HA) or being able to quickly recover?
- HA = complexity. Do you really need three, four or five 9’s?
- Do you design a perfect fit each time or stay consistent across the network?
- Ex. Deploy latest switch/server model or stick with the same model used in every closet?
A little about me:
I’ve been in the IT game for about 10 years now with the majority of my experience focused in on routing and switch (8+ years). I currently hold 3 CCNP certifications (R&S, SP, and Design), and am working towards my CCIE. I also have experience with servers, both Windows and Linux, along with some virtualization experience but my passion is routing and switching.
I blog at my own site blog.movingonesandzeros.net and can be found on Twitter @That1guy_15. You can also find me on various forums and hangouts under That1Guy15.
So enough about me, let’s get this ball rolling!