Professional « Jim Leach

The New Job

Posted by Jim in Professional on October 11, 2011

So – time for that promised update on my new role in Cisco..

Datacenter Solution Engineer – I won’t give you the complete speil that’s in the job-spec but suffices to say this brings together my background in DC testing and my interests in virtualisation. The headline reads:

TS Data-Centre Solution Engineer – will be responsible for orchestrating the end-to-end solution support of Cisco’s Data Centre Solutions ( e.g. UCS & Nexus Architectures, Vblock/FlexPod, VDI/VXI, Cloud solutions – Private and Public, etc).

So basically – I help to deliver DC solutions which encompass the whole DC architecture. From the R&S side of things (Nexus), end-hosts (UCS), storage networking (MDS), and the virtualisation part (VMWare, Hyper-V, 1000v). There’s a flip side to this as well; I help work to bring the Partners, vendors and customers up to speed on new technologies and features. On the side, there’ll also be some escalation support to the APAC TAC team.

That’s the short version of what I’ll be doing. There’s still a long way before I feel confident in the role though. DC switching and routing technologies are fairly well known but anything that involves virtualisation appears to be moving at the speed of light in terms of development. On my list of things I already have to catch up on: VM-FEX, VXLAN, OpenFlow and Hadoop clusters. I’m putting Scott Lowe‘s Mastering VMWare vSphere 5 on my reading list for this month too.

Next update – some good virtualisation bloggers and tweeters.

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Time for an Update

Posted by Jim in Professional on October 3, 2011

Yes, it’s not exactly a lively blog! With no updates between May and September (not that it ever was a wild party) – but now I have a pretty big update…

I’m off to Australia.

For nearly five years now I’ve worked for Cisco carrying out network system testing – initially as part of a group called ‘NSITE’, who carried out internal testing for things like Safeharbor and the CVD (Cisco Validated Design) program. In the last three years the same group has evolved to form ECATS – the Enhanced Customer Aligned Testing Services – which has been working with some of Cisco’s enterprise customers, giving them confidence in the stability in our platforms and that they ‘play nice’ when pulled together as a network.

As of last week there’s change afoot.. I’ve applied (and been accepted) for a new role in the Technical Services part of Cisco as a ‘Data Center Solution Engineer‘ – working out of the Chatswood offices in Sydney.

This represents a huge change for me, both on a professional and personal level. On the personal side of things I’m leaving behind many very close friends, some old friends, the family and those most important to me. With any luck, those close to me are going to come to Australia in good time and those who aren’t moving can come and visit. On the professional side of things… well that’ll be in the next post