Hey guys,
Because of all the encouragement you gave me on my last post about this miracle of a job I landed, I wanted to come on here and give you a 30 day update.
So far, I have been learning the infrastructure. I've gone around to some of the places we administrate and looked at the equipment and I've learned how it works.
They are paying for my training and certs, and my boss is cool with me studying on the clock, as long as I'm being productive. I nearly missed the pass on my CCNA a few months ago (795) :/, but I'm wholly confident I could pass it now, given what I have already seen.
During my first week, a lot of it was just driving around with my boss and him explaining our topology. I went to our data center, which was really damned cool, and also around to our "huts."
The data center was awesome. They took my picture and gave me an ID badge. There was a machine that raises up to your eyes and scans your retinas. You have to open a submarine vault door to get into the data center. I had never been at a real one before. I remember it was nice and cool, with blinking lights everywhere. We plugged a laptop in and it looked like something straight out of a Cisco certification book.
The huts were really cool because we share it with google. There is fiber everywhere like spaghetti, redundant generators upon generators, and fire control systems rivaling that of the data center. It was like a bunker, rated for a cat 4 tornado.
The second week I started actually configuring switches. I installed a switch at a police station, complete with ssh, all the required vlans, and a fiber uplink to our distribution switch. The experience was really cool because unlike packet tracer I was able to console in to a physical piece of equipment, and use my hands to rack it up and plug in the uplink.
The third week I was tasked with configuring and deploying a couple traffic camera switches by myself. I started copy/pasting the entire configuration instead of going line by line and after I handed them to the traffic coordinator I forgot about it.
The next day he called me and said they weren't working. I went out there, opened up one of the metal traffic boxes, and plugged a console cable in while holding my laptop. I ran a "sh transciever detail" and noticed that the SFP module wasn't sending out light. I went back to my office yet again and grabbed a new SFP, which I tested on my personal switch.
Once I got back to the first traffic switch, I plugged in the functional SFP module, but I wasn't able to ssh. It turns out that copy/pasting an entire configuration can cause problems. I was able to fix that, but then the second switch wasn't working either, but for a different reason. This one wasn't receiving any light.
Sure enough, when I went to the hut to run a couple jumpers, the guy I spoke had given me the wrong one, and it wasn't reaching my switch. I remember when I went back there was a traffic guy there who let me into the traffic controller box. I had to fix ssh on this switch and verify that it was receiving light. He watched me and I'll never forget what he said.
He goes, "Holy shit man, this is some real computer stuff. I just do the traffic controllers, but thats not anything like this. How long have you been doing this?"
I felt like a wizard and finally after all the things I've been through trying to find this job I felt like I might have made it.
This past week, I have been tasked with configuring 20+ switches for the city PD. They are putting them up on poles, (IE2000's), and connecting a copper SFP to a 360 camera, with the other uplink going straight back to the hut via fiber. I figured out which SVI's to use on the distribution switch, configured them as their default gateways, and have been going one by one. I anticipate I will be done with it next week.
I have also been studying some network automation in my free time after I get home. I love python, and I think my ultimate goal is to combine it with networking, which I have the freedom and privileges to do here, if I can figure out how. I've messed with some libraries, like sockets, and some cisco ones, but nothing in production.
Thanks guys, and the longer I'm here, the more I can weigh in on some of these posts.
TLDR: Boss is a mentor to me. They pay for my training. I've been to places that require retina scans and facial recognition to get in. I'm really getting my feet wet, and I think I'm killing it.
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