2016 Update

If you have seen my other (more personal) blog you will have come across the post I did recently regarding how 2016 has flown by and so many things have changed career wise. If you’ve not read that feel free to jump on over here: http://johnnyward.me.uk/newblog/a-year-of-two-halves/

As this is my technology blog I though I’d share a quick update on skills and technologies that have advanced through this year, the most noticeable are:

  • SQL Skills – yes I know more than just installing now, I can troubleshoot performance issues and tweak setups to ensure a nice smooth running system.. Maintenance of SQL is also one of my most common tasks across many customers.
  • ERP – a broad subject, but I will break down a little. Firstly I am more than capable of a “vanilla” install of Epicor ERP 10/10.1, I’m also capable of updating/upgrading those platforms. On top of that I can also talk tech with IT/ERP managers across all industries to help spec, and install/deploy the Epicor ERP platforms. This also includes a number of additional installs (such as web, Enterprise Search, education tools etc.) and enhancements, such as those for document management and CRM.
  • Hyper-V – not something I’d had the opportunity to play with much before, however I am now capable of installation, deployment, management and maintenance of Hyper-V 2012+ platforms, and I have to say, what a great platform it is.
  • VMware ESX – my knowledge in VMware has also jumped this year, having had the opportunity to manage 2x ESX 6 environments in recent months and upgrade a couple of 5s to 5.5 I am once again familiar with the VMWare suite and as always find it an exciting challenge.
  • Remote Desktop Services – sure we all know a little Terminal Services from back in the day, but having now deployed around 5 of these 2012R2 beauties this year, i am exceptionally impressed. Easy to install and configure, and just as easy to troubleshoot and fix, provided you have the time and mental space in order to do so!

Coming up in 2017…

So it seems there may be a few changes ahead, ones that will potentially make my career, and about time too!

The biggest 2017 challenges seem to be:

  • Cloud – funnily enough the UK hasn’t quite taken to it fully yet…
  • Solutions – how can a product be further enhanced to meet a customer’s longer term goals…
  • Tools – might need a course in C# and a few late nights

Watch this space…

All Tech Photos Over Last 6 Years

For those unaware I am starting a new Infrastructure role in January 2016 and I am very excited about it (if a little nervous)!

In the meantime as I’ve had a nice 2 week Christmas break after leaving the last role, I have managed to collate all my work related/ IT/ Techie photos from the last 6 years of working at IBM, BMS, Redsumo and Magna Interiors/ Grupo Antolin, and here is the link to see all those pics (I’m working on a gallery for this post but the link is good for now)

https://goo.gl/photos/spjo7D3pkqJiGMuM9

 

 

If you need a photo to be removed, please contact me, but they are all my pictures over the last few years, taken on a variety of phones from Blackberry Curves up to my latest LG G4!

 

Tech Update

It has been a while since I posted an update of all the technologies I’ve been working with, projects I’ve worked on and general IT related things that have affected me in recent times, so here’s a brief update of my world of tech!

 

Latest Technologies used

  • VMWare vSphere, vMotion, ESX 5.5 etc. – underlying technology of the infrastructure in my current role, love the live server migrations between hosts, and the performance monitoring is very good.
  • Windows Server 2012 R2 – finally have the opportunity to work with Microsoft’s latest stable enterprise OS, and I have gradually started to like/ understand the new interface. Some of the updates to certain roles are also very impressive including WSUS (Updates), WFCS (clustering), ADDS (Activce Directory), some very nice improvements over Windows 2008 R2 which is the last main release I am familiar with.
  • WhatsUp Gold – systems monitoring software from Ipswitch, what a fantastic product this is. I can monitor all servers, virtual machines, network components, even WLANs (which is one of the most used features). I have heavily customised the environment to have dashboards for all sorts, most notably the SQL performance (most important system) I can now see real-time memory usage/ system statuses, even in-depth transactional performance!
  • SQL (2008 R2) – Something I’ve had to get to grips with very quickly as it runs the 2 most important systems for my current role. I am fairly confident with performance monitoring, understanding heavy queries, bottlenecks, even a grasp of lazy writes and paging! SQL is usually administered by a professional, qualified DBA, but we cope just fine!
  • SQL (2014) – only within a test scenario but I am very proud of my virtualised SQL 2014 Always-On testing cluster, it has given me an opportunity to better understand SQL installs, Windows Failover Clusters, SQL High Availability and basic database maintenance.
  • Cisco Wireless Networking – heavily used within large organisations across the globe, I now have a fantastic understanding and hands on experience with a network capable of almost 100% wireless coverage within an huge site! I also have great experience with security on these networks and have implemented whitelists (MAC filtering) etc. I’ve also been able to ensure the wireless network is 100% monitored across all nodes and devices, with historical data available to help resolve any issues.
  • Windows 10 – I’m a pure techie, so when the latest version of something is out, I have to try it! I was sceptical of the whole Windows 10 thing, even after trialling the pre-release versions around 12 months ago. So when the opportunity came to try at work I though yes that’s safer than at home! – so 2 months in; every device I have is now Windows 10 where possible. Being an IT admin naturally I’ve butchered it as much as possible to better understand its workings, and to be fair so far I am impressed!

Project Work

Whilst the current role hasn’t really thrown any specific projects my way yet, I am actively involved with a domain migration project initiated by the buying out of our division by another company. That is something that will be happening very soon, and will probably consume a lot of my working hours up to Christmas.

I’ve also been spearheading work to implement a standard way of displaying data across site, this has been done using Raspberry Pi with Screenly OSE which allows scheduling of web content, images and videos for display on HD screens. This again is a recent thing that so far is working very well (no reboots/crashed in 3 weeks)

At home I have also been playing with a Raspberry Pi, and have plans to implement a media server to stream content such as from the home CCTV system and family photos etc. Hopefully this will be done before the year is out once I have a screen in the kitchen!