Did you ever fail at something really important to you? What motivated you to keep going? I'd like to share the story of some recent failures and what I learned from them.

I recently had a flashback to my days as a high school math teacher. Every once in a while I would have a student tell me he / she spent a lot of time studying for a test and somehow managed to not perform well. I used to ask them what and how they studied. After all, I would hand out a sheet with a list of topics covered on the test and have a question and answer session over those topics in the class before the test to help everyone know what was expected.

I realize now I became that student who put in time and energy and still failed. And it didn’t just happen to me once. It happened twice. I hope this glimpse into my experience will help someone understand that failure, though completely debilitating at times, can be our greatest teacher.

You can read the rest of the article here - http://blog.thenetworknerd.com/2017/08/13/learning-from-failure-and-the-third-try-vcp-dcv-6-delta/

Date: Tuesday, Sep 12
Time: 6:30pm - 9:30pm CDT
Location:
Hardie's Fruit & Vegetable Co
1005 N Cockrell Hill Rd
Dallas, TX 75211

It's time once again to get together with fellow Spiceheads for an evening of learning and networking. This will be an unsponsored meeting, so it will be members of the group sharing their stories from the field. The topics for this meeting came together based on conversations had at a previous meeting. Here's what we have in the lineup:

How I Use Google G Suite for My Business
Hang onto your hats for a deep dive on the features and functionality of Google G Suite presented by Ray Hicks, Greg Carreon, and Chris Lambert.

Office 365 Panel Discussion
Join us for a panel discussion on Microsoft Office 365's various offerings, how these compare to Google's offerings, and some common pitfalls in implementation to avoid.

We will be in the main conference room. Feel free to bring your own food and beverage to the meeting as none will be provided.

We hope to see you there. Remember to bring your questions, and come ready to learn something new! RSVP here - https://community.spiceworks.com/meeting/show/2498.

Here's something noteworthy about Samaritan Ministries. The doctor visit was $84 just as the pediatrician's office said it would be. There were no procedures done for which they would need to bill after the fact. They prescribed an antibiotic cream and some liquid to take since she had an infected finger as well (normally the cream would get it). They called it in to a local CVS for us (all done electronically), and when they told me the price of the cream and the oral suspension liquid, it was going to be close to $240 (both were generic).

That's when I remembered Samaritan sent us a prescription card. It came in quite handy and reduced the medicine price by about $100. So if you do end up signing up for something like this (heathcare sharing network), use the prescription card.

@jakub-wawrzacz-p1 said in Site-to-Site VPN between Cisco ASA and Meraki MX: The KB I Wish Meraki Had Written:

Hi NetworkNerd,

I SIMPLY HAD TO create an account to say BIG THANK YOU for putting this together, so thoroughly and being so pedantic about details (just like me) with all information that one could possibly need. It saved my "bacon" two days ago when setting up S2S VPN between MX84 and ASA5510. I couldn't work out why it doesn't sync. Without your KB I'd have to reschedule an important project so again, thank you. I can only hope you got more of these coming.

You are most welcome. I'm so glad it helped someone! It was too crazy of a situation not to tell the story. I have more articles if you search for the networknerd blog tag in Mangolassi (https://mangolassi.it/tags/networknerd blog). And, I've recently created my own personal blog at http://blog.thenetworknerd.com that I try to update regularly with different content.

Hey DFW IT Pros - don't forget about the DFW VMUG meeting on 12/15 in The Colony.  Remember that these are free events and last the entire day (if you choose to stay for the movie screening).  They are definitely geared around VMware and its partners and are a great way to network with some peers in the virtualization community.  It is completely free to attend.

Representatives from NetScout, PureStorage, and DellEMC will be present.  And I'm hoping to be there too.

I look forward to seeing you there! The full agenda and registration link can be found here - https://community.vmug.com/events/event-description?CalendarEventKey=15103c19-8adb-4553-8512-558ce67...

And here's our link for this year:
http://brandibug.blogspot.com/2016/10/halloween-2016-carving-day-1.html
http://brandibug.blogspot.com/2016/10/halloween-2016-carving-day-2.html

Picture yourself in front of a rack of VxRail appliances. Ah, the bright shine of freshly racked and cabled new gear! The network team has VLANs ready. The operations team has picked out naming conventions for host names and virtual machines. Storage capacity will be more than enough to support growth efforts for the next year. It’s finally time to dive into the hyper-converged infrastructure pool of goodness.

Before jumping in, consider the tools used for cluster management in the VxRail world. VxRail Manager (a virtual machine within the cluster) is the secret sauce for lifecycle management, and vCenter is the tool for day-to-day operations. But is deploying VxRail really as easy as stepping through the setup wizard and taking a lunch break? It certainly can be, but don’t let vCenter derail the success of your VxRail deployment. This, my friends, is where our tale begins.

You can read the rest of the story here - http://blog.thenetworknerd.com/2018/03/31/a-tale-of-two-vcenters-vxrail-edition/.

Date: Tuesday, February 13
Time: 6:30pm - 9:00pm CDT
Location:
Dallas Makerspace
1825 Monetary Lane
Suite 104
Carrolton, TX 75006

It's been a while since our last meeting, and we're starting 2018 back at the Dallas Makerspace thanks to Paul Mai (paulmofyourhand). The focus will be on hacking and automation.

Hacking for the IT Generalist

The single biggest reason people don’t sign up for hackathons is they aren’t developers or don’t feel they can contribute anything to the team. But what if there were some practical ways you could start hacking a little at a time and make yourself more efficient at the same time? Automation starts with small steps. We’ll share some practical tips to get started, advice on languages to learn, and have experts share their experience getting into hacking and automation. We hope you will come and join us!

We will be meeting in the main lecture hall. Feel free to bring your own food and beverage.

If you want to learn more about the Makerspace, check out their site here: https://dallasmakerspace.org.

Parking Info:
When you first arrive at the DMS in the vestibule, please sign the waiver on the iPad. Then once that is done, you'll go through the second entrance and look for the signs to lead you to the meeting. I bet Paul would be willing to give anyone interested a tour of the facility after the meeting.

RSVP here - https://community.spiceworks.com/meeting/show/2598

If you're traveling through Fort Worth tonight on your way to Spiceworld, feel free to make a stop in Saginaw to check out our Halloween Tradition. We'll have about 60 carved pumpkins on display. If you're in the area, stop by and say hello.
Perhaps we'll see you tonight!

The address can be found here. I'll be at the Saginaw location.

Everyone have a safe trip regardless.

Perhaps you’ve heard some buzz about Wavefront but don’t quite know what it is or how it can be used. I was in the same boat for a while, but then I saw a demo that blew my mind. Imagine a platform that could ingest time series data (or metrics) from various sources, retain all data points with no roll up, and allowed IT operations and developers to quickly analyze the data for spotting and visualizing trends affecting application performance. How could we use that data to make the business better, and what kind of data actually gets collected? Moreover, how and why are people using this tool? I hope this post will provide some answers.

Wavefront Integration with Google Cloud Platform
The Wavefront website shows a number of integrations, but what does that really mean? Wavefront has pre-built methods for metric collection from certain applications and will guide you through the setup process. There are other ways to get data into Wavefront, but integrations make the process easier.

I happen to have a Google Compute Engine instance running a single Linux virtual machine, so it made sense to play with the Google Cloud Platform integration. This blog post gives some detail on the GCP integration, but once I read it, I wanted to see it for myself. Sign up for a free 30-day trial of Wavefront and a free year of GCP to follow along.

The rest of the story can be found here - http://blog.thenetworknerd.com/2018/04/14/catch-the-wave-with-gcp-a-wavefront-integration-exploration/.

If you follow VMware technologies or want to see what's new and exciting, I recommend attending vForum Online starting today at 11:30 AM Central. You can RSVP and view the agenda by following that link.

I recommend the "What's New" sessions and the "Chat with Experts" sessions. Those are the ones I found most valuable as a customer.

@minion-queen said in Witnessing Sexual Harassment:

I would notify HR ASAP!! Do it on her behalf. If you witness something like this always report it. As a woman I would avoid reporting things like this because, it would cause problems for me to be the one to report etc.

I'd call the copier company and ask to speak to the Sales Manager (hopefully not the guy who came to visit you) or that company's HR department. Then tell the person what happened.

@scottalanmiller - did you notice we referenced one of your articles in the show (also in show notes)? I won't ruin it for you if you didn't.

Thanks to all who came. I still say @scottalanmiller should give a talk about open source projects, the various ways they receive funding, and why that likely makes them more feature rich than monetized offerings. That would be a really good one.

@scottalanmiller said in I can't even:

@mike-davis said in I can't even:

@scottalanmiller said in I can't even:

This guy's FIRST post on SW is to go into the SpiceCorps of Syracuse group and post that he wants to start a new meetup - but apparently can't be bothered to attend the existing ones or to post on SW. Seriously? That's your first ever post?

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2094925-looking-to-start-a-new-syracuse-ny-meetup

@thanksajdotcom @Minion-Queen @Mike-Davis

He PMed me as well. I do need to get back in to the swing of organizing the meetings. I think I saw @NetworkNerd had a good idea for one where he called in a local tech recruiter. It looks like tomorrow the snow will be upon us and if I have a vendor coming in that doesn't have to travel that far, that might be the best bet.

He did, yeah. I didn't manage to make that meeting, though

In this case, I was working at the same company as the recruiter in question and knew him pretty well. He was not specifically a tech recruiter but had interviewed plenty of folks looking for tech positions. Have a look at how the meeting went for yourself - https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2090834-dfw-spicecorps-11-16-2017-career-night. It was very successful in my opinion.

@jmoore said in Episode 3 of Nerd Journey Now Available:

@networknerd You know, just an idea for those of us who all have blogs, maybe we should be linking to and promoting each other. We are all friends here and it would help every blog thats involved.

Absolutely - there have been many blogs I have read which inspired me to write my own blog on a topic or that I found helpful, and I would definitely link back to those in any article.

When we make show notes for the podcast we are trying to ensure we link back to any blogs or podcasts we reference.

I wanted to spread the word about some upcoming local and online events that I hope will be helpful to members of the group. Everything mentioned here is free to attend.

• October 4 - DFW VMUG UserCon - If you work on anything related to VMware technologies, this is a fantastic single day free event covering a number of technical topics. The keynote speaker is doing a talk on career and personal brand that you won't want to miss!

• October 8 - Dell Technology Forum in Dallas - What's new and exciting in the realm of Dell Technologies? Read up on the agenda and come find out for yourself.

• October 16 - vForum Online - This event is completely virtual and can be attended from your desk. Take advantage of the chats with experts if you need information on specific products. The full agenda can be found here.

• Novmber 6 - All Day DevOps - This is a 24-hour virtual event that contains sessions on cultural change, SRE, test automation, microservices, chaos engineering, and much more. I found out about this after attending DevOpsDays Dallas and am really excited about watching some of the sessions. I hope to see @scottalanmiller do a session at one of these events one day.

• November 14 - DFW SpiceCorps Meeting at eSports Stadium
  If you're local to Dallas / Fort Worth, come nerd out with us on Ubiquiti products and meet some of your peers in the area.

What do you do on podcast Tuesday? You listen to the latest Nerd Journey episode, of course! Check out our discussions on why Sales skills are helpful in IT and some Questionable LinkedIn Advice. Find the episode here - http://bit.ly/2N1aqwz

DATE & TIME
Thursday, Nov, 14
5:30pm - 8:30pm CST

LOCATION
K1 Speed
1801 E Lamar Blvd
Arlington, TX 76006

This meeting will be a tour of the Ubiquitu product line. Full details with RSVP functionality can be found here.

I'm a little late on the post, but this week we discuss the ins and outs of training - why you need it, how to train, when to train, etc. You can catch the full episode here - https://t.co/YtihQXa2nS.