Recent Readings

Since picking up my Juniper Networks JNCIS-SEC, I've decided to take a small break from at home IT studying, and do a bit of R&R reading.  I saw a book review from an excellent blog I follow, from a previous employer.

The book is "The Phoenix Project" by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford.  It is a modern day version/successor to "The Goal." Its about IT, DevOps, and managing yourself and your IT team in a way to succeed in the face of overwhelming odds amid a myriad of other issues in the business.

The synopsis:

Bill is an IT manager at Parts Unlimited. It’s Tuesday morning and on his drive into the office, Bill gets a call from the CEO.

The company’s new IT initiative, code named Phoenix Project, is critical to the future of Parts Unlimited, but the project is massively over budget and very late. The CEO wants Bill to report directly to him and fix the mess in ninety days or else Bill’s entire department will be outsourced.

With the help of a prospective board member and his mysterious philosophy of The Three Ways, Bill starts to see that IT work has more in common with manufacturing plant work than he ever imagined. With the clock ticking, Bill must organize work flow streamline interdepartmental communications, and effectively serve the other business functions at Parts Unlimited.


I can hear the groans now. I'm sure a number of you are now wondering how in the hell this can be considered "R&R." Why would anyone want to read a book for pleasure about something they routinely deal with on a day to day basis. Let me explain.


I'm not looking for a purely pleasure book. My mind doesn't work that way. To be honest, I'm always working. I really don't ever shut off. When I saw the fairly glowing review, I decided to take the plunge and see what its all about. The book is actually fairly riveting. Its written in a fairly accessible way, with a first person perspective. While obviously fictional, the lessons therein are laid out right in the open, some by name, others simply implied. There are a few issues in the prose so far, with somewhat of a overuse of the "office politics" card. I've been in some intense meetings in my time, but some of the back and forth between main characters here appear to be forced in a way I can't yet put my finger on. I'm nearly about halfway through, since Friday evening, so I'll update this post with my final thoughts when I'm done.


I encourage anyone to check it out, if they are interested in IT management, DevOps, or just for some simple laughs knowing a lot of whats in this novel is what we go through every damn day.

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The (fast) certification train rolls on...

I'm feeling a bit proud this week.  With very little time to study, I sat and passed the JNCIS-SEC test.  This is Juniper's second level security products exam, focused mainly on the SRX security products.  I used my knowledge gained from working in the field and the "fast track" study guides on the Juniper website here.  They were very thorough.  I borrowed a study guide from a friend who had taken the Juniper security course and compared the content. 

While I'm sure the course (if taught by a knowledgeable instructor) provided better context and labs access, the "fast track" content was very comparable and is highly recommended for those who (like me) are already familiar with the concepts from years of experience with Juniper or other vendors' security products. 

If you absolutely MUST have lab kit to work with, a few base model SRX100s will give you nearly all the necessary capability.  You won't be able to test some of the more advanced UTM features with this model, as it isn't capable, so if you are the hands on type, this might be a problem.  Higher end models are harder to come by for home lab gear, and even those will require licensing to use UTM so you'll probably just have to spend extra time in this section of the study materials.  You've been warned.  I'll admit I didn't do too well here.

There is a fair amount of questions which surrounds UTM, HA, and IpSec so focus a lot of mental energy in these sections.  As for the NAT sections, a good portion of these come from looking at operational mode "show" commands and determining which type of NAT you are looking at (source, destination, static) and whether or not PAT is involved.

Overall, like most Juniper tests, its a healthy mixed balance between concepts, and real world operation, so approach it as such, and you'll do fine.  Good luck!

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