Outside the Asylum

Category: career

  • New sandbox PC

    I bought a new PC recently to run virtual machines on.  Virtualisation is all the rage, so I’ve decided to play around with Xen and VMware.  It also gives me an easy way to play with numerous OSes without having to frig around with hardware. As GNS3 is to Cisco routers, this box will be to OS’s.

    I’ve got ESXi on it at the moment with a ReadyNAS NFS fileshare set up as a datastore in addition to the internal disk.

    Thanks to nice corporate discounts, i was able to get this spec for a good price;

    HP Compaq dc5800 SFF

    • Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 processor
    • 8GB RAM
    • 160GB SATA-2 10K rpm HDD
    • Intel PRO dual port gig-eth network card

    PS: Rational Survivability is a good blog for people interested in Virtualisation and Security

    UPDATE: Something to be aware of. Many corporate desktops have the Virtualisation enhancements in the CPU (Intel: VT-x) turned off by default for security reasons.  On this PC i had to upgrade the BIOS and drill down through the security menu to find the option to turn it on.  There was no doco on it that I could find and HP’s support people had no clue.

  • SANS 2008

    A little while ago I discovered that Verizon has annual training budget for employees to do work related courses of their choice.  Around that time I learned that SANS was holding one of their training events here in Sydney. I’ve always wanted to do a SANS course but the cost put me off.

    I enrolled in “SEC502: Perimeter Protection In-Depth“.  I’ve got a lot of experience with designing and building datacenter networks but it’s been some years since i was was working with people that i could call mentors. So I could do with a bit of a refresher.  The course was being run by its author, Chris Brenton.

    The course finished up yesterday. It was an intense 6 days of theory, practice and examples from Chris’s extensive experience. This course was definately worth the money. I’ve got 6 books of course notes full of scribbled comments. I’ll be going back to the books for months or more, to get what i couldnt absorb during the course itself.

    It was the best course I’ve ever done. Equal best with training i did with Dr. Rex di Bona some years ago.

    My next task is to study for the GIAC certification that’s associated with the course. It’s open book, so that worries me a little. It’ll be hard!

    Another attendee’s blog: Chris Mohan

    Some relevant websites;

    InGuardians Dr Rex Di Bona

    UPDATE: 4 Mar 09 – A week and a bit ago I passed the exam. I’m now a GIAC Certified Firewall Analyst (GCFW)

  • Stepping Up

    vblogowhite.gif

    I started a new job at Verizon Business yesterday. My new role is a Solutions Engineer. I think this is the third major step up in my career. The first was getting my first sysadmin job at Optus, the next was the system integration job for Digicel.

    So far so good. It feels civilized here.