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Next Up and coming great Network Engineer....

walaconsulting
Level 1
Level 1

 

What's up guys...

 

I was hoping you guys could help me out. We had a team of engineers all leave the company in a stance against management. Now I have been thrown, or promoted into the role of Network admin/engineer. I'm actually looking forward to the challenge and am very excited about the opportunity. I've done some self study and I have recently obtained my CCNA and CCDA, and currently pursuing my CCNP.

My question is this... I want to make the network my own; and what I mean by that is, I would like to modify our routers and switches to get maximum optimization from our network devices.

Can anyone tell me what type of daily maintenance checks I should be making on a daily basis to make sure our network is running optimal?

We're also running EIGRP as our IGP and a MPLS network across the WAN. What can I check to make sure all circuits are giving us full bandwidth?

Also, I'm not very familiar with the Cisco ASA; how do I know it's functioning correctly? What should I look for? 

 

Thanks in advance...

 

2 Accepted Solutions

Accepted Solutions

Marvin Rhoads
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

I would recommend a good book for you: "The Practice of System and Network Administration" by Limoncelli, Hogan and Chalup. It's filled with good framework type of information that's not vendor-specific.

Additionally, I'd say in general:

1. Document your network - physical and logical (layer 2 and layer 3).

2. Know every configuration file and what the lines all mean. Back them up! (RANCID is a free open source tool.)

3. Baseline your performance (i.e WAN links and switch uplink utilization) with a basic snmp monitoring tool. (CACTI is a good open source tool.)

4. Send your syslogs off to a central tool and know what they tell you - look up the messages' meaning and remedy any anomalies. On the ASA set your logging to no higher than level 4 or 5 - level 6 (informational) will tell you every single tcp connection and udp flow and should only be used during troubleshooting. Even if you can't read and understand every syslog at least know the typical daily volume. If typical for your network is 1000 messages/day and then one morning your find 5000 you probably need to fix something (if you're phone isn't already ringing). (Kiwi tool - paid version a bit nicer but free is available too).

 

Finally... NEVER stop learning. I've been doing this for over 30 years and hardly a day goes by that I don't learn something new. Good luck!

View solution in original post

You're welcome.

Please take a moment to mark your question as answered and rate my reply.

Best regards.

- Marvin

View solution in original post

3 Replies 3

Marvin Rhoads
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

I would recommend a good book for you: "The Practice of System and Network Administration" by Limoncelli, Hogan and Chalup. It's filled with good framework type of information that's not vendor-specific.

Additionally, I'd say in general:

1. Document your network - physical and logical (layer 2 and layer 3).

2. Know every configuration file and what the lines all mean. Back them up! (RANCID is a free open source tool.)

3. Baseline your performance (i.e WAN links and switch uplink utilization) with a basic snmp monitoring tool. (CACTI is a good open source tool.)

4. Send your syslogs off to a central tool and know what they tell you - look up the messages' meaning and remedy any anomalies. On the ASA set your logging to no higher than level 4 or 5 - level 6 (informational) will tell you every single tcp connection and udp flow and should only be used during troubleshooting. Even if you can't read and understand every syslog at least know the typical daily volume. If typical for your network is 1000 messages/day and then one morning your find 5000 you probably need to fix something (if you're phone isn't already ringing). (Kiwi tool - paid version a bit nicer but free is available too).

 

Finally... NEVER stop learning. I've been doing this for over 30 years and hardly a day goes by that I don't learn something new. Good luck!

 

Marvin:

 

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my question. I've made note of all of your suggestions and plan to look into the book and tools listed. I've especially found your last statement to be true on all fronts.

"Never stop learning"....

 

Thank you,

 

WC

You're welcome.

Please take a moment to mark your question as answered and rate my reply.

Best regards.

- Marvin

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