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It's a Series of Buildings

“The Internet is not something that you just dump something on.

Commvault at TFDx RSAC 2026: Clean Recovery Is a Different Problem Than Fast Recovery

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth — Mike Tyson

Object First at TFDx RSAC 2026: If You Can Turn It Off, It Wasn't Immutable

“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.

Veeam at TFDx RSAC 2026: Three Generations of Resilience (And You Need to Prepare for All of Them)

Rick Vanover, CTO of Veeam, opened his segment at Tech Field Day Extra RSAC 2026 with a statement that was either refreshingly honest or a very good bit of self-aware marketing: “Our audience has a very highly calibrated BS meter.

Security Audits

If you work in IT for even a few minutes, you’ll almost assuredly run headlong into the wonderful world of security audits—ostensibly, services to help you better secure your organization and its assets from internal and external threats.

Zerto

I think that security is still the hottest topic in the IT world right now, the faux AI craze notwithstanding.

Security Field Day 2024

In my current role in the IT industry, I think about disaster recovery (DR), continuous data protection (CDP), and overall ransomware recovery almost all the time.

Moving to Hugo

Since its inception, this blog has run on WordPress. I hosted it with a hosting provider, who gave me a dedicated VM on which I installed WordPress and the assorted tools, themes, and plugins to make it run how I wanted it to.

New Blog Host, New Blog Post

I’m finally back after several years of writing in just about any place other than my lovely blog.

Software Defined, Cisco, and DevNet

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes It has been said that soft­ware is eat­ing the world.

Non-Generic Tips for Cisco Live

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes Edi­tor’s Note: This was writ­ten by my love­ly wife, Jen­nifer Bryson, after a frus­trat­ing few days of read­ing the same hack­neyed advice for con­ven­tion goers.

Corporate Jargon and Argle Bargle

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes “I think we invent jar­gon because it saves times talk­ing to one-anoth­er.

Some Thoughts on Cisco Live Orlando, 2018

Read­ing Time: 4 min­utes Edi­tor’s Note: This is a guest post by my won­der­ful wife, Jen­nifer Bryson

We Broke I.T. Purchasing

Read­ing Time: 4 min­utes “What is the dif­fer­ence between uneth­i­cal and eth­i­cal adver­tis­ing?

Just Write is Just Right

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes I took my daugh­ter and step­son to see one of my favorite authors a cou­ple of days ago.

Uila: Visions of the Future

Read­ing Time: 5 min­utes If it’s true that a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words, then nascent soft­ware com­pa­ny Uila has writ­ten a nov­el with their break­out soft­ware prod­uct for mon­i­tor­ing, and per­form­ing root cause analy­sis on, vir­tu­al­ized and phys­i­cal net­work infra­struc­ture, bridg­ing the gap between both.

Living the Command Line Dream with Mutt

Read­ing Time: 6 min­utes It prob­a­bly stems from how long I have been using com­put­ers, and what my first com­put­er inter­faces looked like, but I have been enam­ored of com­mand line inter­faces since, well, for­ev­er.

Glue Networks Changes the Automation Game

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes “Sim­plic­i­ty is the ulti­mate sophis­ti­ca­tion.” Clare Boothe Luce

Cisco Live 2016 Wrap-up

Read­ing Time: 4 min­utes The 2016 Cis­co Live con­ven­tion has just wrapped up, and I felt I should write a post-con­ven­tion arti­cle as my own cathar­tic way of send­ing it out with a bow on top.

Cisco Announces <span class="caps">VIRL</span> on Cloud

Read­ing Time: < 1 minute Cis­co just announced today that their VIRL prod­uct, for­mer­ly only avail­able in a per­son­al edi­tion, and an enter­prise edi­tion, will be avail­able in a cloud host­ed ver­sion soon.

ZeroStack — Simplified and Automated OpenStack

Read­ing Time: 5 min­utes “Clut­ter and con­fu­sion are fail­ures of design, not attrib­ut­es of infor­ma­tion.

Virtualization Field Day 6

Read­ing Time: 2 min­utes I’m sit­ting here watch­ing an episode of Top Gear as I write this, and wax­ing con­tem­pla­tive on my recent invi­ta­tion to both a Tech Field Day one-day event and Vir­tu­al Field Day 6 .

Cisco Live <span class="caps">US</span> 2015 Customer Appreciation Event Band

Read­ing Time: 2 min­utes I just want­ed to post a quick announce­ment around the band for Cis­co Live this year.

A Wendy’s Cheeseburger, Hepburn on my iPhone, and cancer

Read­ing Time: 9 min­utes “__ In my heart, I will always be the girl with­out the met­al, and you will always be the boy with all his bits.

Brocade Builds a Team of Visionaries

Read­ing Time: < 1 minute http://web.archive.org/web/20210419160534/http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/datacenter/brocade-builds-a-team-of-visionaries.html

Packet Pushers Podcast and Network Field Day 7

Read­ing Time: 2 min­utes “I think of myself as some­thing of a con­nois­seur of pro­cras­ti­na­tion, cre­ative and dogged in my approach to not get­ting things done.

The Writing Process as Photography

Read­ing Time: < 1 minute I’m cur­rent­ly work­ing on mul­ti­ple writ­ing projects, as well as look­ing for­ward to begin­ning a new, dif­fer­ent gig tomor­row, so my office is a bit messy.

Choice or the Illusion of Choice

Read­ing Time: < 1 minute I recent­ly wrote an arti­cle for searchS­DN at TechTar­get on the sub­ject of choice in the SDN mar­kets.

On Buggy Whips and Restlessness

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes Two roads diverged in a yel­low wood,

Cisco Modeling Labs (<span class="caps">CML</span>)

Read­ing Time: < 1 minute The prod­uct for­mer­ly known as VIRL has been rebrand­ed and is slat­ed for release in the first half of 2014.

Network Field Day Calendar

Read­ing Time: < 1 minute For those of you who under­stand what Tech Field Day is, and want to fol­low this week’s events, feel free to use this cal­en­dar to track the events.

Burnout Redux

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes Late­ly I have been strug­gling with career burnout.

Ruminations on Software Programming

Read­ing Time: 4 min­utes Soft­ware pro­gram­ming is a chal­leng­ing endeav­or. I know, because it’s how I start­ed my career, and it’s still some­thing I do for fun and to keep my net­work engi­neer­ing skills sharp.

Network Monkey

Read­ing Time: < 1 minute Pub­lic Ser­vice Announce­ment of the day: I’ve long believed that the Trunk Mon­key secu­ri­ty sys­tem should be avail­able in a net­work mon­key form.

<span class="caps">OSX</span> <span class="caps">X11</span> Forwarding

Read­ing Time: 2 min­utes I access var­i­ous Unix and Unix-like sys­tems all the time.

On Titles, Certifications, and Not My Job

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes I’ve nev­er con­sid­ered myself—strictly speaking—a net­work engi­neer, or any­thing in par­tic­u­lar like that.

<span class="caps">SDN</span> Explained

Read­ing Time: < 1 minute Soft­ware Defined Net­work­ing Explained: type­def struct net­work {

On Writing

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes So, you want to be a writer?

Cisco Live and Social Media Redux

Read­ing Time: < 1 minute A few peo­ple you might rec­og­nize, includ­ing yours tru­ly, are fea­tured here in a video for Cis­co Live.

The <span class="caps">API</span> Obsession

Read­ing Time: 4 min­utes Edi­tor’s Note: Any resem­blance to per­sons liv­ing or dead, known or unknown, read about, heard about, talked about, dreamt about (just once, don’t ask) not intend­ed.

Interview Questions I Hate — Part I

Read­ing Time: 2 min­utes “So, why do you want to work here?

Coping with Difficult Bosses

Read­ing Time: 4 min­utes Author Jan­ice Davies said, “dif­fi­cult peo­ple are your key to self empow­er­ment, you need to learn how to cope with them, not let them dom­i­nate and affect you.

<span class="caps">SDN</span> Myths

Read­ing Time: 6 min­utes In 1876, an inter­nal memo at West­ern Union is report­ed to have read: “This ‘tele­phone’ has too many short­com­ings to be seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered as a means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

My <span class="caps">OSX</span>

Read­ing Time: 5 min­utes I have decid­ed to take a quick break from my more busi­ness-ori­ent­ed writ­ing of late to focus on some­thing that peo­ple seem to have an inter­est in: how I have my com­put­er set up and con­fig­ured.

Standard Disclaimers

Read­ing Time: 5 min­utes This prod­uct is meant for edu­ca­tion­al pur­pos­es only.

<span class="caps">SDN</span> in the Enterprise

Read­ing Time: < 1 minute I recent­ly wrote a mul­ti-part blog series for Cis­co and, as we know, while it may seem like the writ­ing is all of the work, get­ting the word out is at least as hard.

How to Not Get Fired

Read­ing Time: 5 min­utes “Very thin line between arro­gance and confidence…Being hum­ble is that line.

Sales Advice to VARs

Read­ing Time: 4 min­utes There’s an old busi­ness adage that says, “All things being equal, peo­ple want to do busi­ness with their friends.

Cisco Live — A Spouse’s Viewpoint

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes Teren and I just returned from Cis­co Live in Orlan­do.

#<span class="caps">CLUS</span> 2012 Photos

Read­ing Time: < 1 minute Because we are com­ing up so quick­ly on Cis­co Live 2013 in Orlan­do, and because it is a Sun­day evening and I can­not find a sin­gle thing I am moti­vat­ed to write about, I decid­ed to build a pho­to gallery of some of my pho­tos from last year’s Cis­co Live con­fer­ence in San Diego.