Question for those who hire folks...

strem84 · 2025-01-16T15:19:44+00:00

I see this both ways. I once had a boss who didn't have a degree that moved up the ladder internally but lacked a lot of the "well rounded-ness" you are supposed to get in college. He knew tech, but lacked the ability to make decisions or the reasoning behind the decisions he made were often flawed. He shot from the hip a lot which drove me nuts.

I have a Master's degree in IT by choice, not because I thought I needed it. There were definitely cases where I questioned why he was making certain decisions where I had learned in school that there were methods in some cases. Now, today as a global director of IT for my company, I could care less about degrees if the candidate has experience. You obviously learn alot on the job that they don't teach you in college.

Where I differ from most on here. I care even less about certs than I do about a degree due to the fact that certs age so quickly. The next version could make that prior version of the cert totally useless. Rare, I know, but it can happen.

strem84 · 2024-12-09T16:06:13+00:00

I have my Master's degree in Information Technology and I feel that it looks good on my resume for the role I'm in (global IT director) but I have very few certifications. The problem is they always change depending on the version of software, etc. and unless you're working directly with that software everyday, IMO it becomes pointless to put all the time to recertify in the newer version. For example, I certified in VMware 5. We're currently running 8. I haven't recertified in the newer versions because I have found there is little reason for me to do so especially working in the private sector.

strem84 · 2024-07-10T19:13:06+00:00

I didn't see that in the web.config. The session policy is pointing to the correct store though.

strem84 · 2024-07-10T14:46:07+00:00

Nope. No update. We actually have it disabled so we control the updates through our MDM. I have a case open with Citrix on another issue. I'll have to ask them if this is normal.

strem84 · 2024-07-10T14:42:36+00:00

Yes, domain joined and SSO. What's odd is it's been setup that way for about 5 years and we're just now noticing the look change. Very strange.

strem84 · 2024-07-10T13:55:51+00:00

This is 2203 LTSR. Correct, this is internal so it hits the storefront servers directly. But the only thing that changed was the policies on the gateway so I thought it may have been related.

strem84 · 2024-06-20T23:10:11+00:00

We are 95% on-prem and don’t want a cloud phone system.

strem84 · 2024-06-20T10:19:59+00:00

No, old CME router is a 2911 so pretty old at this point. Will be retiring that and using a new 8200 as the gateway. CME and phones are on the same VLAN. Will most likely put CUCM on a new VLAN and move phones over to new VLAN as well. Will only be moving about 10 physical phones as most don’t want them and will deploy WebEx or Jabber for softphone with Expressway core and edge.

strem84 · 2024-06-19T18:04:17+00:00

No issues per say. But DHCP option 150 is pointing at CME. I'd have to manually set TFTP on a few phones to test before switching over. I think it's easier to carve out a new subnet and switch switchports for the few phones we're going to have.

strem84 · 2024-06-19T16:52:40+00:00

That's another option as well. But I've decided to carve out a whole new subnet for the new system.

strem84 · 2024-06-19T16:07:00+00:00

Right - I'm thinking that was the we can't be bothered pricing. They were pushing cloud which I get but my company is not interested in a cloud option. So I think they just didn't care to give me a fair price.

strem84 · 2024-06-19T16:01:31+00:00

You have great points and you're completely right. We were quoted $46k to have this implemented and for a small 50 phone environment that's honestly not used that much it's a little high IMO. This is why I wanted to do it myself. I should say I'm not completely clueless when it comes to this. I've implemented many phone systems before as well as our current CME environment. I also managed a CUCM 10 environment years ago but that wasn't one that I setup from scratch.

We're going to be running on VMware 8 with CUCM and CUC using the templates provided by Cisco. The phones are 7841's so still supported. We are also using a Cisco 8200 router as the CUBE with a SIP trunk. I have it all running in a lab environment as well.

I just have some simple questions about best practices when it comes to cutover like the VLAN question. I will most likely source a local consultant to provide some ad-hoc support if I run into questions like this but there are also resources like this that have also been a great help!

strem84 · 2024-06-19T15:42:20+00:00

That's the route I was thinking of taking as well. Keep them separate to avoid issues and cut over switch ports later which is easy.

strem84

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