Network engineering

Are you a cable boy or a network engineer?

Recently SearchNetworking.com ran a news story highlighting the emerging skills necessary for network engineers and administrators to survive. The article summoned an outraged call (I believe the word he used for his temper was simmering) from a network engineer at a global firm. He was appalled that any network engineer or administrator would not already come equipped with the skills we outlined.

The story in question called on networking professionals to train themselves in application management, cloud computing, security – a lot more than providing simple IP pipe access.

“Opening dumb pipes is for cable boys. If you don’t know this stuff already, you’re not an engineer,” my annoyed friend said. “You’ve set the bar too low.”

My first thought? Do you really believe that all high level network professionals are ready to push into emerging technologies without some urging?

My second thought: What does this guy have against cable boys? And isn’t that as un-PC as you can get in the world of networking?

But that’s not what he meant.

“The assumption of the story should have been that the network is seeing a demand for more senior level network administrators,” he said.

Sound a bit arrogant? Maybe, but he explained that a real network engineer, administrator or manager is a homegrown product that starts as a cable boy and listens to others to learn. Real engineers, he said, don’t get one or even two certifications and settle for what vendors feed them.

As they grow, they find the humility to reach across IT silos and get over networking protectionism to learn more about complex technologies that increasingly sprawl across departments.

At every level of the networking team, a professional will find this is the time to form alliances between systems, security and networking groups.

“If you have one guy who does firewall and that’s all he does, you’re going to have a problem,” he said.

What’s more, if these departments don’t approach the C-level executives together, they are not likely to get the resources and support they need to implement complex technologies.

“If you’re not working as an alliance, you’re setting yourself up to be outsourced,” he warned.

How network engineers can avoid the data center move blues

Just because we’re surrounded by bad news doesn’t mean we can’t turn our lemons into lemonade. That’s at least what network management software solution company Advanced Systems Group (ASG) has done (not to be confused with the ASG band). They found a way to help enterprise IT/network administrator’s avoid datacenter move blunders in a way more compelling than a white paper — they sang about it in their YouTube video: The Data Center Move Blues.

Because we all know, when a data center moves, the network can’t go down. “Oh you know it can’t go down,” wails ASG founder and band front man John Murphy on what appears to be a Martin Backpacker Guitar.

When relocation, deduplication and virtualization complicate the network enough to make IT engineers sing the blues, it’s good to know what not to do during the data center move process.

ASG suggests avoiding these bad boys:

• Bad move #1: The so-called professional help
• Bad move #2: The every-man-for-himself move
• Bad move #3: The do-it-yourself move

More importantly, don’t forget to plan a great deal with your data center team and reach across to the right people. Before making a move, you can’t afford not to plan for every risk, and disaster preparedness will help you stay up while everything else is down.