Tag: Load Balancer

After the previous day’s “networky” stuff, day 3 was back to some stuff that was more relevant to me. Amongst other things, I got a quick primer on IPv6, which was pretty useful and we looks at iApps and iRules. It looks like I will be writing lots of iRules using TCL to replace the functionality of our Apache reverse proxies. Fun, fun, fun… 🙂

We finished at about 15:00, so I hit the road and managed to do the M25 and M40 in a reasonable time. It wasn’t good, but it could have been a lot worse.

The challenge now is to get to work on Monday and try to start putting some of this stuff into practice before I forget everything. 🙂

Thanks to all the folks at F5 for a good course. Thanks also to the other folks on the course for putting up with my noob questions. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Day 2 was a lot more “networky”, so it was pretty tough. I got through all the labs and stuff worked, but if I’m honest I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing. 🙂 Added to that, I won’t have privilege to do most of the stuff we covered when I’m on the real kit, so I’m pretty much going to forget it all in a few days. 🙁

Once again, it’s testament to the course that a complete networking gumby like me was able to survive the day.

Day 3 has got some sections that are more relevant to me. I’ve been swimming, so now it’s Monster, Diet Coke and Coffee for breakfast, check out of the hotel, then head off to start day 3.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I went to see Dawn of the Planet of the Apes last night.

Today I will mostly be saying, “DBA not kill DBA!”, and, “DBA not trust human!”

As I suspected, I’m the only person on the course that doesn’t know what a network is. 🙂 If I had not been tinkering with the reverse proxies over the last year I would have been pretty much lost.

The course itself is well structured and the teacher is good. The fact I’ve not flounced out in a huff is testament to that. 🙂 The pattern will be quite familiar to anyone who has been on a hands-on course before. Discuss a topic with slides, then do a hands-on lab that works through that stuff.

It takes a while to get into the swing of things and I’ve proved to myself I am incapable of reading other people’s instructions, so it’s a good job I usually write my own. Now I’m starting to get used to the interface and command line, I’m hoping today will be a bit easier.

From a brief discussion, what I need from the load balancers seems *drastically* different to most of the other people in the room. I think this is going to be quite a long and arduous road when I start having to apply some of this to real situations. I sense a lot of external consultancy… 🙂

It is interesting coming from a different background to the others in the room and seeing how we approach things from different angles, and with different emphasis. I’ll write a blog post about this when I’ve finished the course, because it’s been something that has been brewing in my mind for a while…

As you will probably already know, I followed the day with a visit to see Guardians of the Galaxy.

I’ve been swimming this morning and now I have to log on to work to fix some stuff before starting day 2 of the course.

Cheers

Tim…