#087 - Network Assessments with Mack & Robert Data Center Therapy

You’re a one-person wrecking crew.
You rock your compute infrastructure, your hypervisor and virtual machine management system, and your storage subsystems, but you’ll admit, you could use some help with the networking side every once in a while.  In fact, every now and again, something happens on the network and you never can quite get to the root of it; you rebooted a device and that ended up fixing it ninety nine times out of a hundred.  Let’s not talk about that one-hundredth time - that was a doozy and turned out to be an obscure setting, or a malfunctioning printer or client system.  Either way, it sure would be nice to know, for certain, if you could make things better, permanently.
Or…
Maybe you’re at a large organization; perhaps even in the networking and security arm of an I.T. group, but somebody new starts and as you look over the documentation, you realize it’s terribly out of date.  It would be a great exercise to map everything out and update the records and create diagrams in addition to mentoring the new person, but there’s just not enough hours in the day to do both.  Or…is there a way you could?
Welcome back to another episode of your favorite I.T. podcast with a healthy dose of empathy, Data Center Therapy.  Your hosts, as always, include the gregarious and well-travelled Mr. Matt “Traffic Shaping the T1 with Napster” Yette as well as the multi-talented and tenured Mr. Matt “Hospitals don’t have change control windows!” Cozzolino.  In this edition, the Matts welcome IVOXY Director of Consulting and O.G. of the Networking Practice, Mr. Mack “Channel Surfing” Nethkin as well as the newest IVOXY Senior Network Consultant, Mr. Robert “Pain is just Weakness leaving the Network” Clack.
If terms like STP, HSRP, VRRP, BGP, OSPF, and Dynamic Routing get your motor running, great.  If it’s all Greek to you, that’s A-OK - in fact, you’ll likely pick up a few new network terms while giving this one a listen.
When listening to this latest episode, you, our grateful listeners will hear tales of:
Mack’s experiences at Alaska Airlines and how those experiences shaped the practices he advocates for (including good switch names) and things he looks for when delivering network assessments for customers. The various sections of a typical network assessment, and what are included in those sections (including infrastructure, availability, management, performance and security elements, all to paint a more complete picture!) How network assessments are performed (and yes, there are diagrams!), the red/yellow/green light methodologies, but also more importantly, the why of the assessment - and why those reasons matter to businesses. Please be sure to like, share and subscribe wherever you found this podcast and stay tuned to our show to learn about our upcoming training courses, including a second round of Matt Cozzolino’s Advanced vSphere 8 class.  Catch you on the next jam-packed episode of Data Center Therapy - and stay safe, assess your stacks or get some help assessing them, and as always, stay informed, DCT friends!