Wednesday was a very busy day. I am sure that a great many people are dragging this morning, as is typically the case with all Customer Appriciation Events I have been to.
Solving Security Challenges with Cisco IOS Embedded Events Manager: this session is cool for many reasons. The presenter made videos demonstrating the creation and testing of several scripts for different purposes. I have only ever used IOS EEM for one thing and it certainly wasn't my first choice, but it worked so well, I am very interested in expanding its use in my customer networks. Some specific examples included bouncing an interface that was "stuck" after a special kind of attack or creating an email alert after interface utilization exceeds a pre-defined threshold.
FCoE - Design, Operations, and Managerment Best Practices: Since I am actively involved with designing a large datacenter, I thought this would be a good session to attend. I attended many SAN classes last year, but just didn't really "get it". The FC review at the beginning of this session really helped alot. We covered alot of the architectural options available today, as well a those that will be available when FCoE multi-how is supported.
Advanced IEEE 802.1x Design and Troubleshooting: While I have deployed 802.1x several times, I thought it would be beneficial to see what is new out there. They have several updated ideas. 802.1x Monitor Mode is a great way to evaluate how prepared an organization is for wired 802.1x.
Of course the customer appriciation event is a very popular destination. We had several cover bands playing songs from a wide range of artists with Tina Turner, Garth Brooks and of course Elvis impersonators. Smash Mouth was definately the star of the show. Everything was high energy. I got to spend some time with very intersting people talking, learning, and partying. iPhone picture from the show with this years hat (orange Elvis hair with integrated glasses) will be posted as soon as I get around to syncing the phone.
