Diary of a Network Geek

I’m sorry I missed a “fun” link yesterday.

Yesterday was my last day at Loomis, Fargo & Company. It was a bitter-sweet day, I have to admit. I’m glad to be moving on to something that I think will be a much, much better job for me, but I’m really going to miss a lot of the people I used to work with there. It’s sort of ironic, really, that I’m going to miss this place, because when I started, I never planned on staying very long. I always saw this as a place-holder, or stepping-stone, to somewhere else on my way to a better job. It was just something to pay the mortgage while I waited for the market to recover. Well, the market still hasn’t quite recovered, but it’s getting better and I’ve spent about 18 months treading water.
Okay, that’s not quite true. I did learn a lot more about Linux and I got my CompTIA Linux+ certification. I also updated my CNE (Certified Novell Engineer) to version 6.x. I haven’t quite completed my CompTIA Security+ certification, but that’s been mainly due to the upheaval of changing jobs. After I settle in, I’ll start working on that again and bang it out. It is, after all, a single test that will certify me for life. And, of course, I also learned more about Unix in general and the Veritas backup program on Sun Solaris in particular. All of which has been very, very cool.
But, one of the things I was “promised” was that I would be working on more Windows 2000 servers. The plan was to be replacing all the 35+ Novell servers with Win2K servers at all the branches. Well, that never happened due to budgeting problems and a CIO that didn’t understand why remote sites needed servers. (Yeah, I know, I can’t believe it either!) So, what that meant was I did a lot of backup administration and played nursemaid to a bunch of old, cranky Novell Netware servers. Not a great “resume builder”, is it? Well, I didn’t think it was a great use of my CNE either. So, when the rumors of outsourcing started, I started paying closer attention to the job-list e-mails that I got. And, well, the rest is history.
So, I found myself another job, but I also managed to place a friend of mine from the “old days” at Harbor at this position. He’d been out of work for 15 months. It was a pain that I knew all too well and I was very happy to help out a fellow CNE who was down on his luck. Also, this guy used to report to me so I knew he could do the job. It was a really good fit. And, in 90 days, I get a kickback from the recruiter, so it’s all good!

I’m really going to miss working with a great bunch of people, but I really look forward to meeting some new friends and working in a new, challenging environment that will really use my skills.

in my sleep!

I’ve really been bustin’ my hump the past two weeks cranking out Linux servers. Specifically, I’ve been making, and reconfiguring, Red Hat Linux AS2.1 servers out the yin-yang. I made six in one day. Then spent a couple of days going back and cleaning them up. Then, I had to install the Veritas agents and setup backup jobs for them. Then, we found out that at least two of them had to have shared storage!
So, this past weekend, I had to figure out how to do Linux clustering. And it was working fine, until we had to reconfigure the IP addresses yesterday. Now, it’s wacked. It seems to be centered around something with a piece of external hardware. See, to have good, safe fail-over, the cluster relies on an external power “switch” that reboots the servers. That way, it ensures that only one of them is in control of the shared disk-space and the Oracle database that resides there. Anyway, the cluster config only worked if we left out the section that sets up the power switch. So, Friday, I’ll have to try and reconfigure it. Hopefully, that will let us reconfigure the cluster, but who knows… Ah, on the job experience. Gotta’ love it!