The Daily Network Monitor

I was wandering around various job sites just to see what kinds of network management career opportunities are available. I was looking for job requirements where SLAs are defined as well as what level of experience was required. And while I did find a lot of opportunities where SLAs were defined, another interesting aspect became apparent, which I discuss below.

While the normal requirements for Cisco certifications, VoIP, QoS and routing, server monitoring experience were required, one thing that stood out was the need for experience with network monitoring tools. Of course the big-boys, HP, IBM and CA were mentioned but even more surprising to me was how many positions defined a requirement for experience with WhatsUp Gold.

While I am an Ipswitch employee, it was very interesting to see the number of positions that required WhatsUp experience as a requirement. Below is one job description that was particularly interesting (names have been deleted to protect the innocent):

Dynamic company is currently seeking Telecom VOIP Administrator. Candidate will assist in managing WAN connectivity to 50+ remote sites; participate in 24×7 on-call rotation; manage vendor relations; provide 2nd tier support to helpdesk staff; assist in managing existing Cisco IP Telephony solution and installing solution at new sites; document WAN and LAN, keeping documentation up-to-date.

Technical Experience:
Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Visio, Active Directory, Cisco Networking, EIGRP, BGP, Frame-relay, MPLS, Network Monitoring, WhatsUp Gold, SonicWALL Firewalls, Catalyst 45xx, Cisco IP Telephony, Cisco Call Manager 4.0, Cisco Unity voicemail

Requirements:
CCNA, College Degree (B.S. or B.A.), 3+ years Telecom experience, Cisco VoIP experience

This leads me to ask a question of network administrators/managers out there. Would a certification on WhatsUp Gold be relevant to building your career credentials?

I recently joined Ipswitch in marketing after a hiatus from the enterprise networking space. I come back to find some significant changes and some things that seem to never change.

The things that have changed:

- more devices
- more bandwidth
- enterprise VoIP has arrived (finally)
- firewalls
- 802.11 wireless
- software licensing
- less documentation

Things that have not changed:

- stressed out Network Administrators
- understaffing (do more with less)
- more devices
- software bloat
- incompatible systems
- software licensing
- lack of documentation

Several things have occurred to me over the past few weeks and now even more than ever, is the expectation that the network is a utility and like heat and power and is just expected to work. So heavy is the reliance on network infrastructure, that most companies literally shut down when access to servers and the Internet has been compromised. Reactive management of networks is no longer acceptable and given that a network management professional’s job is at stake every time there is an issue, pro-active or predictive management of this critical asset is essential.

How many network administrators have internal SLAs that they are measured against for services up-time? I’d be interested in hearing from the folks in the trenches about their experiences and how they meet these expectations.

I’ll dig into some of the above changes and not changes over the next few weeks.