RE: New Sr. Engineer Role

Reach out to your local Cisco account team on day 1 - they
can help you
understand what they've put in there
If you need help finding out who's assigned to your org,
ping me
off-list

- Bill Creighton


-----Original Message-----
From: nobodygroupstudy.com [mailto:nobodygroupstudy.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2008 10:24 AM
To: ciscogroupstudy.com
Subject: New Sr. Engineer Role [7:132273]

So, I start a new job soon. I will be the sole Sr. Network
Engineer for
a
company. I have worked with networking and telecom for over
a dozen
years
and 1/2 of that in a Cisco environment. I am a current CCNA
and have
completed the CCNP Academy, but have not passed all the
tests yet, but
have
been working at a CCNP level for a couple years.

This new role will put me in charge of a complete enterprise
network for
the
first time ever. In the past, I have merely worked under the
structure
of
someone other people's designs and restrictions. The US
operations that
I
will be responsible for consists of 15 locations, 2 data
centers and 800
employees.

I will be in charge administering and optimizing the Cisco
LAN/WAN
environment as well as the two existing data centers and
some Security
aspects, such as VPN and ASA firewalls, video conferencing,
and Cisco
Call
Managers for voice. Also, we are moving to a new building in
April and
we
will be building out a new data center there as well as the
LAN
infrastructure for about 400 people, before moving in and
migrating data
center devices.

My questions are this... What kind of things would you do
first when
coming
into a new environment you are now in sole charge of? How
would you
start to
evaluate it and start to improve it. What kind of questions
would you
have
for your supervisor?

I want to be able to come in with a "take charge"
attitude and be able
to
start evaluating things and making recommendations. My
manager is aware
that
this position is a step up in my career and that I have not
previously
worked in a senior role.  But I want to start things out on
the right
foot
and impress my boss right from the beginning.

Also, What are "must have" books to have in your
collection for topics
like
best practices, network optimization, security, data center
design and
management, QOS, BGP, MPLS, ASAs, Cisco Call Manager. I am
sure I have
some
titles that people will recommend, but I think this is a
good
opportunity to
see what all of you recommend as well.

Thank you for your input.
     - - - - -                              Cisco           
               
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&i=132276&t=132273
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