Wow…it has been a long time since I last posted…and it has been a year, let me tell you. In fact, 2017 was the busiest year I have ever had…just way too much happening, both at work and at home. And something had to give…so I cut back on my French horn playing (that hurt), and I stopped blogging (which I did miss, but not as much at my horn). And yes, things have slowed down a bit, at least so far, in 2018. I’m rejoining the local orchestra and here is a blog. Sorry for the long absence…but sometimes you have to rearrange priorities and make some hard decisions.
So…what made 2017 so busy? Mainly work…I had two huge projects that I was managing…one was the opening of a new district office (lots of people, cabling, network equipment, and dealing with carriers). The other was the disconnect of all remaining MPLS circuits, and moving to new DIA (Direct Internet Access) circuits. (I’ll talk more about this in a later blog.) And add to all of this is the normal, everyday fires that take up lots of time and energy. Ugh!
Both of the projects are now done…the new office is opened and running very smoothly. In fact, it’s not often that users will compliment me on how fast the network is, but they did here. And all of my old, legacy MPLS circuits are gone…now THAT was a huge project. I’m running mainly static VTI tunnels for now, but I’m in the middle of converting my entire WAN to DMVPN running IKEv2, with a dual-hub, dual-cloud setup. This REALLY has my geek juices flowing!! I’ve been pushing for some sort of network redundancy for years, and I finally got the green light! I’ll let you know how all of this works out later this year.
The other project that kept me busy was the first floor remodel at my house. My wife and I did almost all of the work (painting, refinishing cabinets, and new floors)…the only thing we hired out was the new granite countertops. It looks great, and we got it all done just 2 weeks before Christmas, when most of our kids were able to make it home for a visit!! It was a GREAT Christmas having family home!!
I hope things are going well with you…and you’ll be seeing more blogs now…(fingers crossed).
Great seeing this post!!! I’m glad all is well and to hear of some of the things going on in your life. If certainly like to great more about both your work projects and home projects. I’m sure all of us techies would like to hear about the process of moving from MPLS to DMVPN. Looking forward to seeing more posts. 🙂
Glad to see your blog again in my inbox 🙂 as a complete network engineering noob (that may still be too high of a title) I look forward to hearing about your transition from MPLS to DMVPN. All I see now is technical jargon.
I hope 2018 feels like it’s more manageable and neutral compared to 2017!