I have attended multiple Wireshark webinars presented by Riverbed and leaders in the field. They title this series “Return to the Packet Trenches” with some sort of variation or subtitle for the different sessions. I always walk away with something new. This latest webinar was no exception. It reviewed several CLI options for creating, analyzing, and editing packet captures. I highly recommend attending these webinars if you have any interest in Wireshark and staring at packets.

So, I had the Toys ‘R Us theme song randomly stuck in my head today. After running through it a couple of times I realized they are no more and we can’t be Toys ‘R Us kids anymore. We all have to grow up…depressing.

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. It isn’t exactly the same, but I have figured out how to log AWS VPC flows to provide the data.

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