Samples of Work

As mentioned in my work term reflections, when I arrived for my work term positions, the first task I was given was the reworking of the college’s WSUS. The project had been attempted originally, with very little time to properly research the service, or implement it in a reasonable fashion. It became my job to make it work and get it deployed.

I went to work immediately, researching the best method for deploying WSUS without creating a great deal of overhead (a major concern, if automatic approvals are not properly configured and synchronization is customized properly). Initially, we were to start with a storage volume of 40 GB, which is an appropriate size for core updates of the different server OS’s we use at the college (2003/2008 & R2/2012 & R2). I implemented the server and we started with a small test group. I then delved into the research of the best way to link the clients seamlessly, and this carried me into the realm of GPO’s. In the end, we developed a handful of GPO groups to properly manage an update schedule and more details are in the work term reflections, but the long and the short of it is that WSUS is now servicing all of the college’s server base with their updates on a regular basis and schedule that ensures as close to 100% uptime as is possible.

 

What I Learned

I learned a great deal from this project, being the sole individual responsible for its deployment. I did more research than I have likely done for any other project I have worked on. I learned about WSUS itself, different uses for IIS other than its web services, folder and file structure, NTFS permissions, troubleshooting, and GPO’s. I already had some experience with most of these subjects, but got to go much further in-depth with each than I had previously done. More importantly, looking at the bigger picture, I learned that I could have real value working in this environment. When I agreed to pursue the positions with the data center, I was in my first year of studies and had been away from IT for some time. I had tinkered privately, but hadn’t worked in a professional tech environment for many years. This position and in particular, this project, re-solidified my decision to return to this sector and pursue this diploma.

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I have been scripting using PowerShell for the data center since I started there last May. It will actually have been one year this month (February, 2015) since I started using PowerShell and I haven’t looked back. I really enjoy working with PowerShell and I know that there is so much more I haven’t even scratched the surface of yet. PowerShell works a great deal with objects. Everything is viewed as an object, and each object has properties you can work with. Those properties have values you can act upon. It is especially useful when working with Active Directory objects, allowing the discerning administrator to automate tasks that previously were just a serious pain to have to deal with.

PowerShell is also customizable. You can create your own cmdlets, aliases, and even provide your own documentation for them! That is an amazing feature for the creative genius who wants to create a wealth of optionality and place it at their own (and everyone else’s) fingertips. I think that might be my favorite thing about PowerShell; the community supporting it. There is a real wealth of information on Tech Net about PowerShell, but there are also many, many great community resources for people to discover and share PowerShell with each other.

Though I do not provide any hard script code here (due to potential security issues for the data center they were developed for), I can provide hard examples in an interview if requested.

 

What I Learned

When I did my first diploma, I studied many object-oriented programming languages, and among them was .Net, which I unfortunately never developed a reason to use very much. I still retain the principles of what I learned to this day, but moved away from .Net and started exploring PHP, along with other, more popular web scripting languages of the time. PowerShell allowed me to rediscover .Net in all its glory and has expanded my ability to work within the Windows environment 10-fold. Every task seems achievable now. I never stop to think if I can accomplish something, I simple ask myself how I will accomplish it with PowerShell and then I start researching how to make it happen. I have only ever had to say no to one script I have been asked to produce and it was because my research pointed to serious security risks for the organization. Who wouldn’t say no to that?

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Project Mythic was certainly the most ambitious project I have been involved with during my two years at NSCC. The project was considered a capstone project for the entire program, essentially. The idea was to create a “Hybrid Cloud” environment, linking a server infrastructure on premise to an Azure deployment in the cloud. Each of the two environments would have its own AD DS and the two would be linked together through VPN.

Initially, we were to have several pieces of server equipment to build the on premise environment with, but that did not work out, so we constructed our “server stack” with desktop machines. This obviously limited the power that we could work with, but fundamentally still allowed us to build the basic virtual server farm we wanted to.

The documentation and planning for this project was extensive. We spent roughly two months of classes out of a semester planning and documenting the steps we would take to implement our final build. This documentation included:

• Business Case
• Project Charter
• Project Scope
• Project Plan
• Project Breakdown
• Naming and IP addressing schemes

After this, we went through a mock interview experience to “apply” for job roles on the project team. I ended up with a Junior PM position, along with three other candidates for the other three teams. We held bi-weekly planning and status meetings with the Project Manager (the instructor) so that we were all on the same page throughout and a lot of solid ideas that helped the project came out of them.

My group was specifically in charge of the finalized project plan. We also had to identify stakeholders and project teams for each component. There were four teams determined, for Azure, Hardware/VPN/SAN, Hyper-V, and ESXi. Once all of the hardware was in place, the end goal was to create a local build that included two Hyper-V machines running some VM instances, a mirror build in the ESXi environment, and two SAN’s connected and handling storage and migration between them. I am happy to say that my team’s portion (the Hardware/VPN/SAN), was a success. We were able to use FreeNAS to configure an iSCSI storage solution into the environment. Unfortunately, the VPN portion was changed mid-project and we didn’t have a chance to incorporate that piece.

What I Learned

I believe the entire class learned a great deal from this project. The technologies we explored were all very interesting. Some I had worked with before, others not at all. Hyper-V and ESXi were both very impressive products in their own right, though I would have to say I am partial to Hyper-V as a product. VMWare’s ESXi is a very, very powerful tool as well. I can easily understand why it is the industry standard in its field. The entire Azure environment was excellent to work with. It is amazing how they have made it so simple to spin up machines, tear them down, and rebuild entire virtual networks of servers in the cloud in a matter of minutes (when you know what you’re doing). I have even begun writing a PowerShell management suite as a pet project. Who knows when that might come in handy, right? For the hardware and SAN portion, the SAN build was something entirely foreign to me and I was happy to be able to take that on and learn an awful lot about building a SAN and FreeNAS particularly. What an excellent product to work with. I learned a great deal on this project, and had a great experience being a Junior Project Manager, leading a team to an end result that I feel was a complete success!

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