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 ourFeatured Seriesgives you some insight on some of our most engaged folks. F5 Community Member Mohamed Salahis 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's Featured Member for May - Rodolfo Nützmann
Our Featured Member series is a way for us to show appreciation and highlight active contributors in our community. Communities thrive on interaction and ourFeatured Seriesgives you some insight on some of our most engaged folks. DevCentral Member and 2022 MVPRodolfo Nützmannis our Featured Member for May! Let's catch up with Rodolfo!DevCentral's Featured Member for December - Mohamed Kansoh
Our Featured Member series is a way for us to show appreciation and highlight active contributors in our community. Communities thrive on interaction and ourFeatured Seriesgives you some insight on some of our most engaged folks. F5 Community MemberMohamed Kansohis our DevCentral Featured Member for December! He's been helping many other members with some great tips so let's catch up with Mohamed! First, please explain to the DC community a little about yourself, what you do and why it is important. Mohamed: Well Firstly, thanks for this appreciation. This is Mohamed Kansoh, I’m Egyptian and I’m 26 years old, I’ve earned my bachelor’s degree in “Communications and Electronics” from Faculty of Engineering Menufia University since 2019. After that I worked on myself by taking more online trainings in networks and security field to be more qualified in Labor market. I started my career at the beginning of 2020 at BARQ Systems Company where was my first time to deal with F5 Products and other security Solutions. I started working with Firewalls then F5 Technologies such as BIG-IP LTM and ASM which I have found it more interesting and powerful to know and work with Specially with troubleshooting in network and security issues. At BARQ SYSTEMS I implement new F5 projects from Scratch and support our customers in their technical issues until resolved. DevCentral: You’ve been an active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved? Mohamed: Yes, I see that F5 Community as a third hand for anyone who works with F5 technologies. When I get stuck with issues with F5, implement a new service or have any concern, I used to search for an adequate workaround, I find the clue or ideal solution at F5 Community. Also, it’s not fair to see F5 users need help or have technical concerns and I know a proper solution for them and do not reply, indeed! it’s a disappointment to see issues or technical concerns with no answer or reply even if a reply as a matter of thinking out loud. F5 Community expands my scope of knowledge, I learn much from it specially iRules and technical Articles, F5 Community adds to me every day and it keeps me updated. F5 is the closest network solution to my heart and I hope to reach the expert level with All of F5 Technologies one day! I value it and its role in networking, especially with troubleshooting, Also F5 gives you a clear vision throughout your whole network. My word to our customers “if you want a rich, secured and a high-quality network, you must implement F5 to offload your applications.“ DevCentral: Tell us a little about the technical expertise you have. Mohamed: After almost 3 years of working experience in network and Security Field, I have got experience with: Routing, switching and network design. Multiple Vendor Firewall Solutions such as: Juniper SRX Firewall. Palo-alto Firewall. Fortigate firewall. General knowledge with Forcepoint. General Knowledge with Cisco FTD. Web Applications Firewall (F5 ASM). Application Delivery controller (ADC F5 LTM). General Knowledge with Global load balancing (F5 GTM). General Knowledge with Infoblox (DNS, DHCP, IPAM) “DDIP Certified”. General knowledge with Symantec ProxySG. (Forward Proxy). DevCentral: You are a Network and Application Security at Barq Systems. Can you describe your typical workday, how you manage work/life balance and the strong support of F5 solutions? How has the recent pandemic impacted your work? Mohamed: In normal days, I engage with our customers who require to implement new services, have an issue, and need troubleshooting until it solved, start new projects from scratch (implementing, Configuring F5 appliances) till Lunching the targeted production services. Nowadays, I engage with “Telecom Egypt “Company one of the biggest ISPs Companies in Egypt, I support them in a project related to F5 Advanced WAF, I have finished the implementation and Configuration of F5 appliances and now it serves production services. In my free time outside of my work, I pass this time with my wife and my laptop beside me to check the DevCentral Community periodically. I want to see if anyone has inquiries or technical concerns and my wife sees what I do and how I’m happy when I help someone. She becomes thrilled when someone accepts my solution and she loves the right marks ✔! 😄 She encourages me so much to help others. If there are no technical concerns in the community, I study to complete my F5 certification path or reading more technical Articles. I used to play Football when I was a child, but I have given up playing football at college ☹ but still enjoy watching football matches till now. Due to Covid-19 pandemic I have worked much more from home, maybe pandemic does not affect so badly with persons who works in IT field because they can proceed in their work tasks remotely. But it impacts badly with people in other fields which they do all of their work tasks physically with their hands. I hope safety for each one and hope the world to be cleaned from this Covid-19 pandemic. DevCentral: Do you have any F5 Certifications? If so, why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career? Mohamed: Yes, I’m a certified technology specialist in Advanced WAF, I passed F5 (101, 201, 303) exams, and now I am preparing for the rest of 3xx exams specially (F5 301a and 301b). Then I target to start studying F5 GTM, APM, AFM and BigIQ. Really, it’s a disappointment to see questions in F5 Community and I can’t reply or give any solutions related to (APM, GTM or BIGIQ), I still need to be more qualified in other F5 modules. To be honest, F5 Certification improves my understanding, knowledge and self-confidence, there is a noticeable difference in my quality before and after studying and taking exams. I do not think you can support strongly F5 without reading, studying, taking notes, working alone, searching, and organizing yourself in general. Certification has made a difference in my technical personality and self-confidence when dealing with our customers, even in my work promotions! I appreciate the certifications very much and my hope is achieving the expert level of certification path one day. “Sometimes technical certificates speak instead of you and give a very good impression about you!“ 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 do not remember a specific challenge because DevCentral Community has helped me many times, but my biggest challenges were with iRules. With navigating Devcentral community, I can say that my level in writing codes has been improved by detecting my errors in them and solve them quickly. Sometimes you don’t find your technical needs in F5 articles, and you find it easily with DevCentral so I am grateful to this community which includes helpful people. DevCentral: 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 aimed to be an engineer and I’m lucky to achieve my childhood dream which became my destiny, so I think that I am on the right way in my career and doing my best rather than thinking of another one. DevCentral: What are You a Force For? Mohamed:I am a force for my wife. I’m grateful to her and my parents as well. I am a force for rejecting racism and I believe in a decent life for all. ---Thanks Mohamed! The DevCentral Community really appreciate your willingness to share with our Members. Connect and Follow on Social: Mohamed on LinkedIn BARQ Systems on Twitter BARQ SYSTEMS on LinkedIn BARQ Systems WebsiteDevCentral's Featured Member for July - Sebastián Sierra Domínguez
Our Featured Member series is a way for us to show appreciation and highlight active contributors in our community. Communities thrive on interaction and ourFeatured Seriesgives you some insight on some of our most engaged folks. DevCentral Member Sebastián Sierra Domínguezis our Featured Member for July! He's been on a tear lately with helping other members so let's catch up with Sebastián! DevCentral: First, please explain to the DC community a little about yourself, what you do and why it is important. Sebastián: Good morning, Good Afternoon, and Good Evening to everyone, my name is Sebastián Sierra Domínguez I am a system engineer in love with F5 technologies. I live in Spain but I´m originally from Colombia, I packed my baggage more than 3 years ago and decide to leave my life in Colombia and start a new life in Spain one of the most remarkable decisions in my life. I started with F5 solutions since 2015 and from this day I never stopped learning new things and expanding my knowledge. In my free time, I like going to work out, cycling, jogging, playing basketball, roller skating, and other things that represent a good lifestyle, because we keep many times seated for a lot of hours working. DevCentral: You’ve been an active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved? Sebastián: Well, DevCentral for me was always one of the best free communities with difference from other vendors, and I decided to keep involved because when you help other people, at the same time you are reinforcing your knowledge and creating new "a win to win", in many times I have to turn on an F5 device to test a feature and found a solution to help the community. and absolutely because this community around the years provided me always support and I think that this type of platform must keep working always and with the help of everyone we can make it's possible. DevCentral: Tell us a little about the technical expertise you have. Sebastián: For the last 8 years, I have been working dedicated to F5 deployments with all the different modules in F5, BIG-IP LTM, ASM, GTM-LC, APM, AFM,BIG-IQ, and Advanced Protocols, but life was not beautiful always, I had a lot of works as technical support, SW and FW administrator, Linux operator, probably the best base to be a humble person who always listens to fist the customer and try to meet all their requirements. DevCentral: You are a Security Specialist atLogicalis Spain. 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? Sebastián: At Logicalis I help our clients to develop and deploy F5 products to meet technology necessities, government requirements, security improvement, and many other use cases. I start my day with a good coffee from Colombia, I read my emails and prepare all the necessary meetings with my customers for the different projects that I have to meet, I deploy many labs, test a lot of configurations and probably this is one of the reasons that makes me participate constantly in the DevCentral community, I'm always looking to extend and improve the deployments with my customer to give the best customer service, one of my personal focus in each project. Covid-19 changed my life absolutely, before pandemic I always woke up early and prepare for going to the office, and now everything is different, work remotely is an amazing benefit, but trying to keep a good lifestyle when you are all day in the home is fundamental, balance your work and time for your self is not always easy but is important keep always in mind because personal time and family time is one of the most important things in life. DevCentral: Do you have any F5 Certifications? If so, why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career? Sebastián: I'm 401-CSE security and 402-CSE cloud around 4 years ago and I always re-certify my exams, it is important for my company for many customer processes, and of course, it is important for me because it helps you to differentiate from other candidates in interviews for example, and this was the key point that helps me to move to Spain with a work permit, so yes, it helps me to improve my life and my career opportunities and I only can to thank the incredible work from the Dr. KJ (Ken) Salchow and their amazing certification team. DevCentral: Describe one of your biggest Customer challenges and how the community helped in that situation. Sebastián: Well, I think that is difficult to determine what is the biggest customer challenge that the community helps me to solve. because I continue using the public F5 resources such as AskF5 and Devcentral to improve and solve many issues that I found in my customers day to day. and of course, I have to mention the technical support that provides F5, probably one of the best of all vendors, I always call F5 support when I have a critical issue, and in 80% of the cases I solving the issue with their help. DevCentral: Lastly, if you weren’t doing what you’re doing – what would be your dream career? Or better yet, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up? Sebastián: Becoming a system engineer was my second plan in life, I always liked machine function and mechanical engineering was my first plan but unfortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to study this career. And today I think that my knowledge allows me to use all the F5 modules to develop solutions that help to improve the security and functionality of my customer's applications, and in other perspectives, this is like building a machine taking pieces of software that makes a specific function. ---Thanks Sebastián! The DC Community really appreciate your willingness to share with the DevCentral Community. Stay connected with Sebastián on social media: Sebastián on LinkedIn Logicalis on Twitter Logicalis on LinkedInDevCentral's Featured Member for March - Nikolay Dimitrov
Our Featured Member series is a way for us to show appreciation and highlight active contributors in our community. Communities thrive on interaction and ourFeatured Seriesgives you some insight on some of our most engaged folks. DevCentral Member and 2022 MVPNikolay Dimitrovis our Featured Member for March! Let's catch up with Nikolay Dimitrov! DevCentral: First, please explain to the DC community a little about yourself, what you do and why it is important. Nikolay:10 years ago I started working as a Network Engineer and after some time I also got involved in Network Security and after that Cyber Security. I am happy that I was first a network engineer as in this way I had a good foundation with technologies that work between Layer 1 – 4 of the OSI model and after that I learned some web programming languages like PHP, Javascript. This helped me to start working with the F5 Big-IP Application Delivery Controllers devices as for the F5 systems a person needs a good foundation at all the layers of the OSI model and some basic understanding in web scripting. DevCentral: You’ve continued to be an active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved? Nikolay:I believe in teaching others and not just giving them direct answers to their questions and the F5 community gives me the ability to do so. This is the way I answer questions in the F5 community by providing information and even F5 official articles that have the answer. DevCentral: Tell us a little about the technical expertise you have. Nikolay:I worked with many technologies like DLP, Web Proxy, Endpoint Protection, Next Generation Firewalls, NDR/EDR, CDN, Bot Protections, Web Application Firewalls, DDOS system testing, Web Scanner testing, Ansible/Terraform automations and many others but my biggest experience is working with F5 systems like most of the modules of the F5 Big-IP ADC, BIG-IQ and irule scripts. DevCentral: You currently are a consultant in the field of Cyber Security/Network Security. Can you describe your typical workday, how you manage work/life balance and the strong support of F5 solutions? How has the recent pandemic impacted your work? Nikolay:Recently I decided to move on and I left the last company that I worked for as I want to be directly invloved in managing IT projects, related to the F5 technologies and NGFW. Because F5 has lab licenses, I have my own virtual IT lab on my computer that helps me to reserch and prepare for any F5 related IT projects and because I like F5, working with F5 does not stress me out. In my free time I go to the mountains, as in my country Bulgaria there are many mountains. DevCentral: Do you have any F5 Certifications? If so, why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career? Nikolay:I have the highest level of the F5 Certifications the F5 401 and 402 Security and Cloud Expert Certifications. DevCentral: Describe one of your biggest Customer challenges and how the community helped in that situation. Nikolay:My biggest challenge was getting into scripting and working with iRules and F5 EAV External monitor bash scripts but the F5 community had many examples of iRules and bash scripts and I could have always asked a question and someone would help me. 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? Nikolay:When I was kid I wanted to be an astrophysicist or space commander that has his own space ship, somethink like in Star Trek.I still want my own Space Ship, so I can travel between the Stars but in the mean time till I get my space ship I am also happy working with the F5 systems as every F5 project makes me think and learn new things. ---ThanksNikolay!We really appreciate your willingness to share with the DevCentral Community. Stay connected with Niokolayon social media: Nikolayon LinkedInDevCentral's Featured Member for February - Byungkuk Kim
Our Featured Member series is a way for us to show appreciation and highlight active contributors in our community. Communities thrive on interaction and ourFeatured Seriesgives you some insight on some of our most engaged folks. DevCentral Member and 2022 MVPByungkuk Kimis our Featured Member for February! English is his second language so, let's catch up with Byungkuk Kim! DevCentral: First, please explain to the DC community a little about yourself, what you do and why it is important. Byungkuk: This site is so helpful for me. When I started as an F5 network engineer, I always found correct information on here. So, now I want to be give help who need help for things related to F5 devices. DevCentral: You’ve continued to be an active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved? Byungkuk: I found things that I didn't know about problems when I visited DC site. So, I tested that and it works well! This is reason why I continue to visit the DC site. DevCentral: Tell us a little about the technical expertise you have. Byungkuk: I deal with BIG-IP LTM, GTM, SSL Fssl/Rssl. It's awkward to say I'm an expert, butI've created some iRules to solve problems or change the network environment to get the best network performance. I always try to my best! DevCentral:You are a Network Engineer at Secuwave. Can you describe your typical workday, how you manage work/life balance and the strong support of F5 solutions? How has the recent pandemic impacted your work? Byungkuk: When I started this company. I got a book called "Why I Work?" from my boss. This book made me work hard and realize why I work. I think my life changed when I focused on worked hard. DevCentral: Do you have any F5 Certifications? If so, why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career? Byungkuk: I have 6 certifications relate to Networking, two of them are F5 Certifications. I'm trying to get to 301 certification. F5 certifications have taught me how to make progress on F5 technical open cases and teaches me how F5 devices handle traffic. And one of my certifications is related to AWS - my company is preparing for the recently updated network environment. DevCentral: Describe one of your biggest Customer challenges and how the community helped in that situation. (Does not necessarily have to be devcentral) Byungkuk: The DevCentral Community was helpful for me when I got stuck making an iRule for a tiny branch point. First, I searched areas related to my problem and then I collected an iRule to make new things! I posted my updated iRule with an explaination about my environment. I really want to thank the DC community members for helping solving my problem! 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? Byungkuk: When I was young, I thought I would be farmer because I grew up in the country. But as I grew older, my dream changed to become an Engineer when I was attending high school. Now I want to be the best member of my company and the F5 Community! ---Thanks Byungkuk!We really appreciate your willingness to share with the DevCentral Community. Stay connected with Byungkukand Controlware on social media: Byungkuk on LinkedIn Byungkukon LinkedIn Secuwaveon the WebDevCentral's Featured Member for September - Pascal Küppers
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. DevCentral Member Pascal Küppers is our Featured Member for September! He's been helping many other members with some great tips so let's catch up with Pascal!DevCentral's Featured Member for April - Scott Campbell
Our Featured Member series is a way for us to show appreciation and highlight active contributors in our community. Communities thrive on interaction and ourFeatured Seriesgives you some insight on some of our most engaged folks. DevCentral Member and 2022 MVP Scott Campbellis our Featured Member for March! Let's catch up with Scott! DevCentral: First, please explain to the DC community a little about yourself, what you do and why it is important. Scott: I am labelled a Senior Network Analyst and work at the lovely campus of the University of Victoria in Victoria, BC, Canada. I’ve been in my current role for 17 years and working with F5 LTM for at least 15 years. I enjoy working with our different teams and finding solutions to providing services to our students and staff. I seem to be good at grasping the bigger picture and how all the pieces can work together. Outside of work I enjoy working on and around my house, spending time with my family and friends, and for the last couple years, quilting. I enjoy creating and working with my hands which is why I am often renovating, gardening, canning, baking, sewing, quilting etc. DevCentral: You’ve been an active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved? Scott: DevCentral is full of many wonderful people and a vast amount of knowledge. I have used the forum archives often when looking for examples of how to implement a solution or how others would write an irule to address a problem. The irule/TCL documentation was my main resource on learning TCL over the years and expanding our set of irules. DevCentral: Tell us a little about the technical expertise you have. Scott: Too many years ago I received my bachelors in Computer Science and Economics from the University of Victoria. In my current position I am the network SME for DNS, DHCP, Cisco Telephony, F5 LTM/ASM/APM and a suite of perl tools. Almost 25 years as a senior administrator/analyst with a lot of programming, scripting and just making things work. Through the F5 User Groups, I have given a number of presentations about different aspects of the University’s F5 and different solutions we have been able to provide with the F5 technologies. Sharing with other local users is a good way to connect with others in your F5 community. DevCentral: You are a Senior Network Analyst at the University of Victoria. Can you describe your typical workday, how you manage work/life balance and the strong support of F5 solutions? How has the recent pandemic impacted your work? Scott: I start early in the day which allows me to do any out of business hours changes first, APM policy work, ASM transitions and larger irule or LTM policy changes. The rest of my day is full of different project work, troubleshooting issues that arise and planning any future development or project work that would benefit the University. The pandemic has oddly provided a number of very good opportunities for me to learn and expand my F5 knowledge. With the almost complete forced evacuation of campus back in 2020, our whole systems team was tasked with making the “UVic-from-home” experience as secure and easy as possible for our staff and students. We moved a number of our student computer labs behind F5 APM as well as a multi-entry point APM policy for staff and RDP sessions. APM is now also being used for many MFA implementations for staff to access protected resources. Through mutual agreement I continued to work on campus full time throughout the pandemic which gave me a very quiet environment and allowed me to focus on the large amount of work to be done. DevCentral: Do you have any F5 Certifications? If so, why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career? Scott: Yes, I just renewed my 301b since I didn’t take time during the last two years to move forward from there. I would like to get a 400 level certification before I have to renew my 301b again. I believe they are a good representation that you know a breadth of information for that level. Studying for 201 certification brought me in contact with Philip Jönsson as he was finishing up production of “F5 Networks - TMOS Administration Study Guide” (with Steven Iveson). I ended up proofreading the entire book for him and connecting with him on a personal level. We got to meet in person the following year at F5 Agility and had some good discussions on our F5 experiences. I was also invited to F5 headquarters in Seattle to take part in a 101 Item Development Workshop where a group of us went through all the 101 certification questions and verified their validity and created new questions for the certification database with an updated blueprint. This was also an amazing opportunity to be involved with F5 and learn the development and backend of the certification process. DevCentral: Describe one of your biggest Customer challenges and how the community helped in that situation. Scott: The first larger challenge where I needed help (and connected with DevCentral) was when we originally put MS Exchange behind the F5 many many years ago. The F5/MS white paper was really good but the DevCentral forms filled in a number of gaps since our installation did not match the white paper installation and some customizations were required to make it work with our environment. Other people had modified monitors and modified the persistence irule to better lockdown different aspects of Exchange. DevCentral also gave me tips on how to see the traffic that was not behaving as expected and how to manipulate it with different policies and configuration. DevCentral: Finally, 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? Scott: I think my first dream job was wanting to run a gas (O2, H) station on Mars, at least 100 years before my time it seems. Other than that I love making things work and putting things together. I have been in this position for 17 years and still really enjoy engaging with others and putting together a configuration of certs, irules, policies and pools to make their applications secure and available. The university environment is constantly changing, upgrading and looking forward to seeing how to make the staff and student experience better, which is a great thing to feel a part of. As for F5, I have found many ways to engage with the company and other customers and hope to find some new ways in the future. ---ThanksScott!We really appreciate your willingness to share with the DevCentral Community. Stay connected withScotton social media: Scott on LinkedIn University of VictoriaDevCentral's Featured Member for April - Mihai Cziraki
Our Featured Member series is a way for us to show appreciation and highlight active contributors in our community. Communities thrive on interaction and ourFeatured Seriesgives you some insight on some of our most engaged folks. DevCentral MVPMihai Czirakiis our Featured Member for April 2023! He's been helping lots of other members with some great tips so let's catch up with Mihai! DevCentral: First, please explain to the DevCentral Community a little about yourself, what you do and why it is important. Mihai: I am a Data Center Network Senior Design Engineer working for _VOIS – Vodafone Intelligent Solutions. I have been working with load-balancing/ADC for the last 8 years (with some gaps). I started my career 15 years ago as a Network Support Engineer. At some point, I started working with F5 LTM and really enjoyed it. Since then, this has been my favorite part of my job. At some point, I wish this would be all I do, ‘playing’ with these types of devices and technologies. The other part that I discovered in the last years is Automation (Ansible,Python). In my free time, I like spending time with my family(I have 2 kids), traveling, and cycling (Road and MTB) DevCentral: You’ve been an active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved? Mihai: I really like helping people. One, because when I started working with F5 BIG-IP LTM, I found help in this forum, and Second, because I feel I need to pass on the things I've learned. It also helps me reminding things that I have not used for some time. DevCentral: Tell us a little about your technical expertise. Mihai: I started as Support Network Engineer focusing and on routing/switching, then moved to firewalls and load-balancing/ADC. I’ve worked with BIG-IP LTM (no other modules unfortunately) and then moved to Citrix Netscaler. I really like working on deploying new applications/services using these devices. Next, I was(still am) into Network Automation. I started with Bash, then Ansible, and now Python. Now I am working in DC Network Design and sometimes this involves BIG-IP LTM devices. DevCentral: You are a Senior Design Engineer at _VOIS. 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? Mihai: Since the pandemic, I’ve been working only remotely and I’ve started to like it. It gives me more time by not having to travel to the office. For almost 2 years I have been working at _VOIS – Vodafone Intelligent Solutions. “_VOIS is a global, multi-functional organisation, a Centre of Excellence for Intelligent Solutions focused on adding value and delivering business outcomes for Vodafone. “ On a normal day, the first thing I do is getting my daughter to school. When I get back, I start working. I am involved in multiple projects, so I am checking every day what I can do for each project. Sometimes I work on only one project for days, other times I can do small bits on multiple projects. When I have time I check the DevCentral forum to see what issues have 0 answers. If I know how to help or have an idea, I test it in the lab environment I have at home. (I have an Intel NUC with Vmware ESXI installed and an Eve-ng VM where I have an LTM with 2 web servers in the backend.) I check the forum several times per day. Sometimes I find interesting problems that someone has already answered and that I don't know how to solve, but I'm learning from them. Working in Network Design, sometimes I get a network design that involves an F5 device usually, but we also have other vendors. These are my favorites. Usually, they are about the topology and what features they can use for the solution or an app. So I have more of a consultant role. I don’t do implementations or operations anymore. I miss working with irules/profiles, setting up virtual servers for challenging web applications, securing an app etc. (But I have my lab for this) After my job schedule ends, I pick up my son or my daughter from school/kindergarten and spend some time with both of them. DevCentral: Do you have any F5 Certifications? If so, why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career? Mihai: After 7 years of working with load-balancing technologies, last year I decided to give it a try and get a certification. So I got F5-CA, BIG-IP. I did it because I had time and I wanted to remind myself of some things I have forgotten by not using them. I believe that experience with a technology beats a certification. That’s why I was not keen to have one. Even now I feel that I have to take the next level certification because the current one does not reflect my experience with these technologies. DevCentral: Describe one of your biggest Customer challenges and how the Community helped in that situation. (Does not necessarily have to be DevCentral) Mihai: It is not a Customer challenge but more an internal request to upgrade to a new OS version. It was back in 2015 when I was struggling to convert HTTP classes back to irules, because HTTP classes were getting deprecated. Doing it manually would have taken me quite a lot of time. So I opened my first DevCentral request. One of the members helped me with a regex command to convert a file of HTTP classes to an irule. Here it is : https://community.f5.com/t5/technical-forum/http-class-to-irule-conversion/td-p/242504 The DevCentral MVP member is: StephanManthey Thanks again! 🙂 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? Mihai: I really love what I am doing and I am happy that I have a job that I like. But if I really have to choose something else probably it would be something about cycling. Maybe a bike shop/service or a bicycle travel agency. ---Thanks Mihai! The DevCentral Community really appreciates your willingness to share with our Members. Connect and Follow on Social: Mihai on LinkedIn Mihai's Blog Mihai's Github _VIOS on the Web _VIOS on LinkedInDevCentral's Featured Member for March - Thomas Dahlmann
Our Featured Member series is a way for us to show appreciation and highlight active contributors in our community. Communities thrive on interaction and ourFeatured Seriesgives you some insight on some of our most engaged folks. DevCentral MVPThomas Dahlmannis our Featured Member for March 2023! He's been helping lots of other members with some great tips so let's catch up with Thomas! Plus, his birthday is this month so let's all wish him a Happy Birthday! DevCentral: First, please explain to the DC community a little about yourself, what you do and why it is important. Thomas: I am an experienced (aka old) senior security consultant who is deeply passionate about technology. I have an insatiable curiosity and am determined to fully understand the inner workings of any technology I encounter. This curiosity has led me down many rabbit holes and taken up a significant amount of my spare time, but it has also been instrumental to where I am today. I joined the security industry as a trainee at IBM in 2000 which started my journey into the world of firewalls, vpn, antivirus (yes I’m that old), mail scanners and a lot more. It was a blast. I had my first encounter with F5 in 2006 and have never looked back. It really got into my blood stream. In comparison, other technologies seem trivial and uninteresting. The F5 technology stack gives an unpresedented visibility into what goes around in the infrastructure and especially what needs to be done about it to keep bad actors out and maintain production stability. I’m told that I laugh a lot and easy to locate in a big building. DevCentral: You’ve been an active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved? Thomas: While the F5 software stack is undeniably impressive, it can also be a daunting challenge that feels like a vertical mountain waiting to be climbed. As someone who has bumped their head and picked up painful experiences along the way, I am determined to spare others from similar struggles. I am constantly learning from DC and consider it my go-to source for knowledge and inspiration. As a result, I feel a sense of responsibility to share my insights with the community. We all stand on the shoulders of others, and I find it incredibly fulfilling to help lift others up and empower them to succeed. DevCentral: Tell us a little about the technical expertise/learning history you have. Thomas: I think, like many others, my journey started with LTM. It was a good fit for me as an infrastructure individual coming from the switching, routing, firewall world. The logic around the proxy mindset gave me a better understanding of the lower levels in the protocols as well as the higher. The more I played around with iRules the more familiar I became with HTTP and its inner workings. It was also in those days when Firepass came around and introduced me to authentication on a whole new level. When Firepass became APM the toolset just jumped to a complete new level. In the good old days before cloud and CDN, BIG-IP GTM (now called DNS) and WAM had its prime time and I also had a couple of projects with delivering content closest to the client. Again, it was an experince which got me up close and personal with HTTP and how you could trick the browser to be smarter. One of the most difficult modules to get on the wire is BIG-IP ASM/AWAF. It took me a couple of months to learn how to use the tool but many many years to master the delicate process of convincing customers that a web firewall is worth the time and show them how to operate it without the struggle. Recent time has given us Shellshock and Log4j so it has become easier to exemplify the needs for protecting the webapplications. Due to the recent geopolitical situation DDoS has shown us how vulnerable we are without proper protection, and here AFM has shown why it is there. It is quite satisfying to watch a DDoS attack just being swept away without interfering with production. As the F5 environment becomes bigger and more complex, I have used more and more time on finding ways to automate and work smarter. This is why I started my Let's Encrypt integration automation scripts. A lot of time goes into this simple but important task and saving just a couple of minutes every day really counts. This scripting focus also talks natually into the way clouds work and how you fx operate thousands of domains in F5 Distributed Cloud. A lot of what is required of us today is simply too dynamic to be operated manually. Fortunately, the F5 software stack has consistently proven to be a reliable and effective solution for meeting these needs. DevCentral: You are a Senior Security Consultant at Orange Cyberdefense. 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? Thomas: My job is multiroled and besides working as a consultant I also have a dozen consultants reporting to me. So, a typical week is split between nursing my consultants, administrative tasks, interfacing with the business and helping out customers. When I work as a consultant my assignments are split into projects and ad-hoc tasks. Balancing all of these responsibilities can be a delicate task, as it is important to ensure that I don't burn out. Luckily I'm a soccer dad which forces me to clock-out and stand on the sideline of the soccer fields or shuttle the kids around the country for matches. There is nothing like mother nature teaching you about themodynamics of the northern hemisphere (freezing your extremities off) to clear you mind. To sharpen my F5 skills I have created my own mini datacenter back home. I run my own mail infrastructure and various other services. Most of these services are tied in behind some sort of F5 product, BigIP or NGINX. This forces me to be eating my own dogfood and is a perfect testbed for solutions my customers are looking for or I can build new crazy constructions for inspriation. It is simply the best way of learning how it all works. Now looking back at the previous 2-3 years of Covid I feel a lot has changed and a lot stays the same. The nature of the pandemic has forced us to think differently, and for some to brake habbits. For some it is now possible to be working remotely which was unheard of before. This flexibility has really given possibilities and made the world a bigger place. It has also shown to me that I really need to be close to people and I how much I thriwe in a crowd. I feel we lost out on a lot of oppotunities because of the distance and people were harder to reach. Nothing beats a room with a whiteboard and a lot of coffee. I think were are slowly finding a new balance between interacting physcially and working remotely. DevCentral: Do you have any F5 Certifications? If so, why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career? Thomas: Yes, I'm a 401 CSE. There are two specific reasons as to why I hold this certification. First one is to keep our partner level, we must hold a certain amount certified consultants. The second one is to prove to customers that I can more than spell to F5. You become more trustworthy with this badge. I have always been in the partner channel so certifications were mandatory. What I have come to realize is that being forced to prepare for these certifications actually gets you through documentation you otherwise wouldn't have. Everytime I do this I pick up new knowledge, niche or sometimes groundbraking. So it isn't all bad. DevCentral: Describe one of your biggest Customer challenges and how the community helped in that situation. Thomas: Recalling all the times I've frantically searched for a small detail that ultimately saved the day is a challenge. However, it's often those little things that make a significant difference. I see the big strength of the community in that you always have access to a solution, part of it or inspiration for it. This ubiquitous access to knowledge for everyone is what sets F5 apart from all others. If I shall highlight a single event I think I will select a situation where one of my customers was suffering from DDoS attacks that we needed to fix - fast. A search on DC gave me a skeleton for an iRule. Our requirements where somewhat more demanding than what we could find, but by giving us the inspiration the iRule grew from 20 lines to beyond 600. This iRule is now in my standard toolbelt against DDoS and is slowly expanding everytime attacks comes in or the customer environments changes. It has proven its worth and is now protecting numerous customers in different industries. A true testament to the power of the community. 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? Thomas: When it comes to my career path it has always been easy - something with IT. Observing others as they struggle to find their way, I feel immensely privileged by how effortlessly my own journey has unfolded. I don't think I have ever dreamed of being anything else, boring I know. Should I have chosen another path, I think I would have chosen a military career. Ironically, when I look at my daily life today, I can't help but feel that I chose a non-kinetic military path, as I find myself entrenched in protecting customers from cyber attacks. ---Thanks Thomas! The DevCentral Community really appreciates your willingness to share with our Members. Connect and Follow on Social: Thomas on LinkedIn Thomas' Website Thomas' Mastedon Handle Orange Cyberdefense on LinkedIn Orange Cyberdefense on Twitter
