ClusterFunk

Here are some tips that have helped me to get to grips with my new role. There seems to be very little quality written information about how to be a TA.  One reason I think is because the position means different things to different people and organisations.  This is my view of what’s important.

Five tips if your starting out designing infrastructure solutions

1) Build a library of reference platforms.

It can be the case that requirements are quite vague, this is because you are designing a new platform. Build a library of reference solutions. In a fast moving IT environment have a number of pre-defined building blocks that you can refer to will make presenting options much simpler. You can then "mix and match" to firm up clients requirements for a solution without wasting lots of time on details specification that are discarded.     

e.g. Have solutions for

Networks e.g.  Cisco 2950s, Cisco 3750s, Cisco 4500s & Cisco 6500s
Firewalls   – small (Sub 100Mb through-put), Medium & Large 1Gb +
Platform in my case *NIX Solutions / Microsoft Solutions e.g. Oracle or SQL   
Monitoring & Administrative activity
Storage
Backup
Security
VM platforms – Compatible NICs, HBAs etc
Physical – Blades / Stand Alone (Proliant)

Consider
Power Utilisation  
 

2) Expand your horizons technically

Learn about as much technology as you possibly can. Now is the time to forget all the Microsoft v Linux,  Mac v PC, SQL v Oracle, and objectively choose technology based on its relative merits. these can include CapEx v OpEx, scalability, supportability, suitability e.g. meantime between failure details or product maturity. There is lots to consider and no one solution is perfect.

3)  Be Pragmatic (OR the art of compromise)

This is the real skill if you ask me. You know your tech but do you understand the business drivers, politics, personalities and culture?  The key to delivering a good solution is sometime not simply a technical solution but consideration it in the context of the points I have mentioned.  There is no point defining a platform that is based on Microsoft .Net with SQL 2008 if the company has a large number of applications based on Oracle DB with Solaris ZFS storage and all the Sys Admins are *Nix based. Its just not going to fly.

4) Budgets

Obvious really but this is key to winning the work. No point designing a two million pound infrastructure solution if the budget for the whole project including development and hosting £350K.  This is were the stock solutions come in. It also helps to choose what is fundamental and what is nice to have.  I love using ZXTMs but sometime Windows NLB is all the budget can provide. Cut your cloth accordingly

5) Communications

Chances are you are the technical person in a team made up of project managers, project sponsor, finance, legal, procurement, Ops, Dev, and Test personnel. You have to communicate your ideas in a manor that is clear and concise. Learn Visio (or some other product) and use it to put together a visual representation of your solution. I find this is the best place to start. I have a load of different requirements and I break them down into components. Once I have all the parts I roughly figured out I put a draft document together and the detailed work begins

If I’m honest I wanted to put some of my Visio diagrams online because they are one of the best tools for communicating solutions with all parties concerned. You can’t see any of the actual detail but they give you a flavour of the sort of thing I put together to communicate my ideas or document a current solution to either confirm or highlight an area that needs clarification. This is my most useful tool and it allows me to put down something and quickly pick it up several weeks or months later. Try doing that with a text description or a couple of spreadsheets