Other than the main character being a manager, it is amazing how close this book mirrors my career path so far. This is fiction, but does a good job introducing business and cloud concepts. I would definitely recommend this for anyone in IT.
The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A story that anyone from an IT operations background can relate to.
As I transition to working in “the cloud” more I am embracing the new technologies and methodologies. However, I’m also trying to replicate what I do in on-prem environments when it makes sense. One way I like to collect and analyze data is using NetFlow. NetFlow provides network conversation details at a higher and summarized level. This has led to quicker recovery time on numerous occasions, or avoided issues entirely.
I love packets and tracing issues at a micro level. However, like I stated in Preparing for the Capture you need to know where to capture before you can dig into the bits an bytes. In order to know where to capture you must understand your service/app/network. The best way to do that is to diagram your service.
This is a great read for anyone starting their journey to the cloud, especially AWS!
Ahead in the Cloud: Best Practices for Navigating the Future of Enterprise IT by Stephen Orban
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
View all my reviews
I generally avoid creating posts that are specific to my employer, but this is already public knowledge and it was fun to be involved even in a small way. So often us “packet junkies” only get to see the results of our work through the lens of smoothly flowing packets. If we’re lucky we might hear the delight in our customer’s voice over the phone or get a nice email sharing the results.
Performance monitoring is two-fold. There is proactive performance monitoring and reactive investigation. The majority of my posts and case studies reflect the latter. This post is more related to the former. Services on premise typically rely on SLAs, NetFlow, scripts, synthetic transactions and more to provide monitoring and alerting. While some of this is possible in the cloud to keep track of specific pieces, you first need a good foundation by knowing if the underlying technology by your cloud provider is operating as expected.
The phrase, “I can’t access my shared drive” was intermittent, but becoming common for a remote location connected via an MPLS circuit. Without hesitation the finger was pointed at the network and my phone rang. People connect to shared drives everyday, but it is one of those things they take for granted. Behind the scenes there are many layers of technology, protocols, and devices working together to make those connections happen.
My career has recently shifted directions. While I still have a passion for network performance and the apps that run on the network, my focus will be directed towards the cloud and the future of application performance. More specifically, I will be specializing in AWS technologies. To start that journey, I achieved the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification. I felt this certification was another test that was well done. It was a good entry level test, but still reinforced the knowledge Amazon feels you need.
