DevCentral's Featured Member for November - Mohamed Salah
Our Featured Member series is a way for us to show appreciation and highlight active contributors in our community. Communities thrive on interaction and our Featured Series gives you some insight on some of our most engaged folks. F5 Community Member Mohamed Salah is our DevCentral Featured Member for November! He's been helping many other members with some great tips so let's catch up with Mohamed!
DevCentral: First, please explain to the DC community a little about yourself, what you do and why it is important.
Mohamed: Hello everyone, this is Mohamed Salah, I’m 26 years old. I graduated from Cairo University Faculty of Engineering in 2019, I started working in the IT field since I graduated. I started by taking courses in networking and security during the last 2 years of college and I found this field very interesting.
When I got to know more about the F5 technology, I never stopped learning and studying F5 since then. I started with the BIG-IP LTM module, then ASM and GTM. I really enjoyed working on F5 modules and I believe that troubleshooting F5 issues is a very interesting thing to go through.
I joined Exclusive Networks recently which is a job role supporting and implementing new F5 projects for customers from Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
I used to play football until I joined college, but unfortunately, started focusing on engineering and left football. But Mo Salah is taking the lead now in Liverpool, so one of us had to leave the football career, so I did. 🙂
DevCentral: You’ve been an active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved?
Mohamed: Since I started working on F5 technology, DevCentral has been a good friend on different F5 issues and topics. It is sometimes disappointing to check a post that is similar to an issue I’m facing and find the post with no answers. I always ask, what if someone already answered this question? And it started from here, I wanted to contribute to any post so that not only the post owner gets help, but also everyone looking for the same request can benefit from my answer.
DevCentral: Tell us a little about the technical expertise you have.
Mohamed: I was working on different technologies such as email security gateways and DDI Infoblox solution besides F5. I also used to deliver trainings to customers and internal teams on F5 modules. But as for now, I’m only working on F5 products, which gives me the time to concentrate on different cases and contribute more on DevCentral.
I have implemented many projects on email security gateway, Infoblox, BIG-IP LTM, ASM , and GTM modules and supported many customers.
DevCentral: You are a Technical Consultant at Exclusive Networks ME. Can you describe your typical workday, how you manage work/life balance and the strong support of F5 solutions? How has the pandemic impacted your work?
Mohamed: My job role basically involves the following:
- Managing F5 projects.
- Conducting meetings with customers to check and discuss any issues they might be facing on their network.
- Making a health check for customers and providing them with recommendations and how they can improve the current solutions.
Usually, if any customer cancels a session, I start checking DevCentral for any new posts or study for the next F5 exam.
The pandemic occurred when I was an employee in Barq Systems which is my old company, which has a great office to work from. I was really disappointed not going to the office anymore as it was very great working from there. But the bright side is that I had more free time for studying and preparing for exams and by the time, we all got used to working from home.
DevCentral: Do you have any F5 Certifications? If so, why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career?
Mohamed: I started taking certificates from different vendors since I started working, like Juniper networks, Forti, and Infoblox. Regarding F5 exams which I consider very interesting and challenging, I have passed the 101, 201, 302, and 303 and preparing for the rest of the 3xx exams till the expert one.
Actually, preparing for each exam helps me gain useful information that accordingly helps troubleshooting many issues as you dive deeply into all topics.
DevCentral: Describe one of your biggest Customer challenges and how the Community helped in that situation. (Does not necessarily have to be DevCentral)
Mohamed: I don’t remember a specific challenge, but the most important topics and replies from my point of view are related to the irules (besides all of the technical forums and new articles that are published). Because usually these requests are not mentioned in any F5 KB, as it is based on the customer's need. So thankfully, people on DevCenral helped me many times with irules’ events and syntax used.
DevCentral: Lastly, if you weren’t doing what you’re doing – what would be your dream career? Or better, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up?
Mohamed: I always remember that I wanted to be an engineer. So, I think I’m already working my dream job.
---Thanks Mohamed! The DevCentral Community really appreciate your willingness to share with our Members.
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