In today’s IT world you have to choose: Either you are going to specialize in one area of IT and be on a constant hunt for mastery of that technology, or you remain an active IT generalist constantly learning the basics of many new technologies. You cannot be someone who learns only a handful of technologies and then expect to have a career in IT. Even if your organization is not requiring that you learn new skil
A friend asked why my articles have been focused on my philosophy of how to approach the IT profession instead of being focused on the technology that we implement as IT professionals. My answer is simply that there is too much information about the technology, but not nearly enough information on how to practice the profession itself. I would rather fill in the gaps than to contribute to the surplus.
I have been v
Any good IT professional probably has a bookshelf/e-reader full of technical books. O’Reilly books on everything from DNS, TCP/IP, Windows, UNIX, Linux, NAS, SAN, and whatever else you can think of are certainly a big part of my personal library. A well written technical book is great! Reading only well written technical books is not so great though.
Technology books only cover one half of IT; Technology books ne
“What is the best practice?”
You will hear this phrase often in the world of IT. Architects, engineers, and management all want to make sure that their projects are being implemented using proven techniques and technologies. Best practices are in theory validated by manufacturers and various professional organizations. Furthermore, best practices are usually based upon what has worked in the field for a large s
A friend asked me what I thought of the Xen hypervisor this week, and I gave him my opinion of it. Now I will not get into my friend’s business or my opinion of Xen here. One is another person’s private business that he allowed me to be privy to, and the other is a matter of my personal taste influenced by my experiences. What I will share with you today is that one of the reasons that Xen was being con
