TechField Day Delegate at Cisco Live TFDx

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Tech Field Day @ Cisco Live

So we are a few days out before Cisco Live 2019 in San Diego begins and needless to say I’m very excited. To add to my regular excitement is the fact that a) is my first time at Live as a Cisco Champion and b) I’m also a first time Tech Field Delegate for TDFx on Tuesday!

Tom Hollingsworth from GestaltIT reached out to me and asked if I would be willing to be a delegate. I had learned about the delegate program last year at VMworld and thought it was a very cool way to get community members and companies together to talk product and shop. It’s really a win-win for everybody, delegates get to learn about the latest tech and companies get a feeling if their product/tech makes sense in the industry.

I’m very stoked to meet the other delegates, some I have been following on twitter for a while and I can be sure there is going to be a lot of smart people in the room!

If you want to learn more about the delegate program click here.

Meet the delegate: Me

Thinking about becoming a delegate? Go here to apply

I’m sure to write a post about my experience shortly. Stay tuned!

Cisco Live 2019 in San Diego

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Cisco Live 2019

Throughout my career I have been fortunate enough to be able to go to Cisco Live numerous times. This year it will be my 7th time to go! Even after all those years I’m still very exited and it is one of my highlights of the year. Plus, this year is my first year to attend as a Cisco Champion, so I’m definitely excited about that!


Every year I learn something new about Cisco Live. One year it was all about Cisco Umbrella for me, which I rolled out a couple of months later at my job. Take note employers, there is tangible benefit to send your IT to Live!


Given we are only a few months out, here are my tips and tricks:

Continue reading “Cisco Live 2019 in San Diego”

VMware Alias Manager and Ticket Service (VGAuthService) fails after VMware Tools upgrade

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A little while back I upgraded our production cluster to a new ESXi version. The upgrade was smooth (as usual, knock on wood) and a new version of VMware Tools was to be deployed. No problem, done’ it many times. This time, there were about 10% of our workstations that were unable to update. I had set them to automatic update on reboot and had all our workstations rebooted overnight.

Continue reading “VMware Alias Manager and Ticket Service (VGAuthService) fails after VMware Tools upgrade”

VMworld 2018 Recap – A NetVet’s point of view

Reading Time: 3 minutesIt’s been about 3 weeks now that I returned from my first ever VMworld and I thought it would be fitting to do a recap of my experience. There are many great blog posts out there about VMware’s great announcements and such, so I highly recommend looking them up. For me this was my first VMworld; I am a Cisco Live NetVet and have been 6 times so far. Although both conferences are very comparable in terms of size and venue, there are some significant differences on how I experienced them. Continue reading “VMworld 2018 Recap – A NetVet’s point of view”

Unable to back up VMware VCSA; StatsMonitor not running

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So, after being at VMworld (Blogpost coming on this soon too!) I was working on our VSphere environment. I’m planing on new hardware with vSan, but for now we have to work with our existing storage. Storage, oh storage, always running low… Continue reading “Unable to back up VMware VCSA; StatsMonitor not running”

Cisco Umbrella Rollout…Oh, where have my A-Records gone?

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During one of my Cisco Live conferences I was talking to OpenDNS about their security features protecting networks and endpoints by filtering DNS requests and blocking malicious requests. I always thought it was a neat idea to add another layer of security. Cisco acquired OpenDNS and created a product called Cisco Umbrella, bundling OpenDNS features and adding feedback from thousands of ASA firewalls installed worldwide plus the magic sauce of Talos. Continue reading “Cisco Umbrella Rollout…Oh, where have my A-Records gone?”

Cisco Live 2017 in Vegas

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Cisco Live 2017 is about to begin, and I’m very excited to be able to go again this year. I have been fortunate in the past to be able to visit Cisco Live for several years. This will be my 5th Cisco Live and I’m happy to be a NetVet. There are many great blog post on why you should go and what to do when you get there, so I would like to talk a bit about why I think it’s a great event to be at. Continue reading “Cisco Live 2017 in Vegas”

So I have started to blog too…

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Welcome to my blog. I have now joined many others to blog about things that interest me. In my case this will be mainly IT related topics. I am an IT manager at a mid-size financial institution, and as such we run many systems other business do as well. Mainly a Cisco, VMware and Veeam shop with some sweet EMC SANs. But, we try to do some fun things too…but that will be in another post.