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.

Another great resource (GITHub) purchased by one of the big companies. We’ll see how this goes… https://about.gitlab.com/2018/06/03/microsoft-acquires-github/”

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.

A wise man (my dad) once told me if you wanted to mow in straight lines you have to look at the end of the row where you want to end up, not right in front of you. This same rule applies to driving. It really helps to watch farther down the road rather than staring at the bumper in front of you. Funny enough, I’ve found this wisdom applies to life too.