Author: Salman Naqvi

Many people have said many things on this subject. What I am going to do is take action and do something small on an ongoing basis.

I am making a promise to my self, and to the few hundred people who read my blog every month, to make sure that after #blacklivesmatter is no longer trending, I keep the conversation alive.

I pledge to take at least a minute to talk about systemic racism in almost every meeting I host, and with permission of the host, almost every meeting that I attend as a guest.

I promise to do my tiny part in at least getting the conversation started, and keep it going. #blacklivesmatter

Four years ago, I posted a video with instructions on how to get your Android phone to read PDF files to you. That video was out-of-date, so now here is an updated version, with bonus content, so in addition to getting your Android phone to read PDFs, you can also get your computer to read almost any document via Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Enjoy!

The app mentioned in the video is available here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=udk.android.reader&hl=en_CA

PluralSight.com is an awesome IT training website with TONS of great quality Cloud, Systems, Process, Programming and Networking courses. They have an amazingly generous offer of making ALL their courses free for the month of April 2020! Now that’s AWESOME leadership by an IT teaching organization.

https://www.pluralsight.com/

Simply go to their site, make an account and start learning!

Also, as noted in previous blog posts, if you don’t know what to learn, LEARN ABOUT CLOUD! Go through Azure and AWS courses. Even in the crazy COVID-19 situation, with record unemployment, CLOUD professionals are STILL IN HIGH DEMAND!

Consider starting your work day with a few minutes of meditation. I can almost promise you that those 5-10 minutes you spend meditating would end up resulting in a more PRODUCTIVE, calmer, fulfilled, happier and conscious work day. Give it a try – no prior meditation experience needed! Everyone can medidate.

If you are not sure where to start, here is a 6-minute meditation. There are literally 10,000s of other similar ones on the InsighTimer website/app and YouTube that you can try as well if this particular one doesn’t suit you. 

Happy Friday!

When working in multi-vendor environments, it can be useful to have tables that compare terminology from the vendors and differences between them. As I have also shared previously, the terminology translation between Brocade and Cisco Storage switching, below is an AWS vs Azure networking terminology translation chart. Note, this table is network/security focused. That’s why basic translations like “Instance = Virtual Machine” are missing.

Edits, corrections and additions are highly welcome! Please comment with your corrections or suggestions! 🙂

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The CLOUDS are coming to take over all our jobs! Run!

Actually, what’s realistically happening is many job functions are slowly shifting towards the cloud. Almost all organizations will have at least part of their workloads on the cloud within the next couple of years. Most startups are exclusively hosted on the cloud, yet at the same time, 150+ year old companies like Sun Life have also migrated most of their applications to the cloud too!

As a network professional, why should you prepare? How can you prepare?

Continue reading “The CLOUDS are coming! How to prepare for the AWS Certified Associate Architect exam” →

Short version: Configuring Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches in ACI Mode (DCACI) is an awesome ACI course, which I highly recommend for anyone interested in ACI, but you need to supplement it with CiscoLive On-Demand Video Library to get the most out of it.

Details:

I can’t believe it’s been four years since my first post about learning resources for Cisco ACI and other related technologies. In 2015, 2016 and 2018, I provided recommendations for additional resources for learning ACI. Now in 2019, I would like to share two resources which I think are CURRENTLY the best options for learning Cisco ACI. If you know of better options, please let me know in the comments below! 🙂

Continue reading “Best Cisco ACI course 2019 update” →

I passed my CISSP last week on my first attempt! – YAY! 🙂

Short version: If you decide to go for your CISSP certification, carve out ~300-350 hours in your schedule, and at least get started with one or two of the free resources listed below. If you feel that you are ready to continue, then buy the books and read them. After that, buy the then-most recent version of Larry Greenblatt’s video series just a month or so before your exam. After that, go through ALL of the practice questions that come with the books and from Larry – and then schedule your exam.

Details:

There are a ton of other posts on the web that outline a study plan for passing your CISSP. One key issue that I ran into was that all those posts listed either way too few (just one or two) or too many (more than 10) resources to study from. In my personal experience, neither finds a good balance between spending too much or too little time required to actually pass your CISSP. I settled with six resources (3 books and 3 video series) which worked out well for me.

Now before we get into which specific resources to study from, I will quickly outline why CISSP is truly an awesome certification:

Continue reading “How to achieve the CISSP certification” →

Short version: Based on my experience, large majority of good jobs in Canada and America are fulfilled based on merit – your qualifications, experience and soft-skills. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you won’t get a job until you get to know someone inside a big company. Focus on your merit instead; do certifications, improve your communications skills, achieve more, work hard and work smart!

Details:

Being blessed with the opportunity to mentor hundreds of individuals over the last decade or so, I am always learning about real and perceived obstacles to employment or advancement faced by many individuals.

One of the most consistent perceived obstacle is the false belief that a reference from an inside a large organization is required to get a good job. One of the key sources of this false belief are cultures from which many of my mentees are from, particularly India, Pakistan and other Asian countries. I am a Pakistani-Canadian, and I have seen this in practice myself. It’s certainly true that many people in these countries get jobs based on nepotism, reference, favoritism and bribery. It’s an unfortunate fact.

Continue reading “The reference fallacy” →

Being very familiar with NX-OS based Fibre Channel (FC) Fabrics, when I was presented with a Brocade (now Broadcom) FC fabric, first thing I googled was “Cisco to Brocade FC translation” and a few other variants. My searches mostly came up empty. That’s why I decided to create my own “translation” table.

 

 

 

 

This table will definitely help me in being able to learn about and manage Brocade FC fabric.

Continue reading “IP/Ethernet to Fibre Channel Translation Guide (Including Brocade FOS vs Cisco NX-OS)” →