Moving to a Different Team

First of all Happy New Year guys !!! Started my new role as Technical Architect with Fujitsu Telecommunications. So now i will be putting a different hat. From a Hands on Systems Engineer to being an Architect.

My Role will be to contribute to complex and diverse bids, tender support and projects within the networking arena for a broad range of multi vendor solutions.

To discuss and design solutions for a wide range of technical projects within the Enterprise and Service Provider sector.

Act as the technical design authority from acquisition to realisation.

I am quite excited for this new role as it will be a new challenge and a new area to explore. Will keep you guys updated on how it is going.

Jordan Migration Finished

Finished Jordan migration over the weekend. Went pretty smoothly. Flew from Jordan to London just to get one day of rest as i am flying off tommorrow to Dubai for the migration over the weekend. But there is light at the end of the tunnel as once i finish the migration in Dubai i have a weeks off and go to India for holidays to see my Parents. So tired today as had lots to do ...Loads of washing to do ... Oh Yes i also forgot that yesterday it was my birthday as well. Felt so lonely as there was no body at house to greet me. But few friends made the evening Fantastic. Right off to Dubai tommorrow. Will post how it goes. Not a big site Few 3560's, couple of Citrix WAN repeaters and two routers ( i dont know what exactly has been shipped). Will see once i am there.

Abu Dhabi finished

Reached home yesterday after 7 hour journey from Abu Dhabi to Heathrow. Finished the migration in Abu Dhabi. Was very quick and never expected that to be quick. Next i am off to Amman, Jordan for the next migration and then back in Dubai for two weeks for the migrations in Dubai. Have this week so expecting to do some reading on my CCIP exam.

Migration in Abu Dhabi

Off to Abu Dhabi tommorrow morning for another migration. Not a big site this one !!! 2 WAN repeaters and few 3560 switches with one 6509 switch. Hopefully should have no problems....

Will keep you posted !!!

CCIP Study Started

Got my books for CCIP today. So the countdown has begun. Have been reading BGP, QOS and MPLS for a while but now its time to put the real experience to test. Got my two books

1) CISCO QOS --Exam Certification Guide (Second Edition)
2) Internet Routing Architectures -- Second Edition

Will give my first composite exam .. BGP + MPLS within next 15 days. Will keep you updated...

LAN Migration Done

Last week was busy migrating a site in Austria and preparing it so that it is ready for this week for the WAN migration. Site wasnt that big but configuring 1 x 6500 swtich, 22 x 3560 switches and migrating the users from the OLD entrasys switch in two days was tiring. But i am glad all of that worked without much of problems. Only one small problem which nearly brought the whole site down. I stil dont understand the real problem but if someone can shed some light on why this happened then that will be great.

What happened was that i had configured port channel on port 49 and 50 . Ports 51-52 were empty. By mistake the Fibre SFP was connected on port 51. We never noticed that while racking the switch and connected the fibre on that. We kept on racking the switches but after around 10-15 minutes users started complaining that they are not getting any IP from the DHCP and within 10 more minutes everyone in the office was complaining. I was quick to find the problem as i worked my way backwards and within 5-7 minutes i traced back to the switch where the SFP was plugged in wrong. Plugged it back into the righ port and .......it worked.

I still dont know how can SFP plugged into a wrong port can cause loop and bring the whole network down. Your comments !!!!!

4 Months into the new job

Its been 4 months into this job and i am enjoying it quite a lot. During this 4 month period i have travelled to about 20-25 countries so far. It has been an incredible experience.

I completed my CCDP during this time as well. It has been a great experience in terms of culture as well. First month i travelled to the Istanbul and then travelled all the way to Middle East. Spent the whole month in Middle East and travelled to Customer sites in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Bahrain, Muscat. Once i finished that part i travelled back to Ankara and then came my first migration in Bratislava ( Slovakia). That migration was a success and i was quite pleased with that. From there on i have travelled a lot into Europe and have done few more migrations and now i want to start doing some design stuff as well. Lets see how it goes.