The daily work responsibilities of enterprise network engineers are different today. They have evolved from managing point-to-point transmission frames and packets to being the liaison between network, server, and storage infrastructure administrators.
This changing role will prompt network engineers to have a wider range of skills in order to adapt the network to business goals.
Because network engineers sit at the core of the infrastructure, they need to be familiar with the applications and data in the network.
Due to technologies such as virtualization, containers, and hyper-convergence, server and storage management have become islands. The network is the core that binds these technologies together. Network engineers need to understand the integration of these technologies.
Many of the skills network engineers need now revolve around the application itself.
With technologies such as automation and SDN, today's networks are tailored to the critical applications running on them. Therefore, engineers must be able to understand application priorities, traffic flows, and other strategies to optimize data transmission.
Gone are the days when network administrators only needed to understand layers one to four of the OSI stack. Today, we must understand everything from the stack to the application layer.
Finally, security will play an increasingly important role in the daily duties of network engineers.
Security is no longer an afterthought, but the first step in any new infrastructure project.
It is up to the engineer to determine the company's network perimeter and internal defense mechanisms to provide a unified security solution that extends from the network to the terminal equipment.
Let us carefully sort out the above-mentioned skills and look at the "nirvana" that an enterprise network engineer needs to master.
Application Flow
Whether you need to configure advanced quality of service (QoS) or deploy SDN on a data center or WAN, a clear understanding of how applications work from a data flow perspective will play a key role in 2017 as it interacts with customers The interaction between terminals, databases, and cloud services is important for network optimization. Therefore, a close relationship with application administrators will be a major priority for network engineers.
cyber security
In the past, network engineers focused their security efforts on the edge of the network. Engineers have a good understanding of firewalls and intrusion prevention, but when it comes to functions such as e-mail, Web and mobile security, network engineers are often at a loss. However, with the development of unified threat management (UTM) technology, end-to-end unified security solutions can manage security issues from endpoints to the cloud. Network engineers have played a greater role in the architecture and support of end-to-end unified security solutions. effect.
SD-WAN
Because companies expect to save OPEX (operating costs), a lot of hype about SDN revolves around WAN. However, some companies that do not understand the limitations of SD-WAN solutions will find that SD-WAN cannot provide the throughput and low latency required for mission-critical applications. Therefore, network engineers will need to understand when SD-WAN solutions are applicable and when to insist on managing WAN services such as MPLS.
DNS
In the past, network engineers did not have enough knowledge of the internal and external DNS functions of enterprise organizations. However, more and more network security issues revolved around DNS, so engineers must pay attention to DNS. DNS is an integral part of many unified network security architectures and a key component of public and private clouds. This means that network engineers need to have a good understanding of how DNS works so that they can better troubleshoot network problems.
The
Internet of Things (IoT) IT development trend will become a major pain point for network engineers. Network engineers not only need to adjust the scale of their wired and wireless networks to accommodate the access of thousands or tens of thousands of IoT sensors, they are also responsible for the security protection issues after the devices are connected to the corporate network. In the face of enterprise IoT deployment, network engineers must be prepared to provide guidance and formulate policies for IoT connectivity and data security.
Virtualized network components and services
Nowadays, a hot topic of discussion in the network industry, SDN is expected to continue to dominate. Although SDN has made great progress in the data center and WAN before, it is impossible for the SDN architecture to expand to areas outside these two market segments in the next year. On the contrary, the conclusion of many IT organizations is that network components and services must first be virtualized before an end-to-end SDN network is in place. Therefore, the skills to understand how to virtualize network services and functions will be in high demand.
Network automation
For many years, network engineers have not been able to automate management to minimize redundant tasks. The reason is simple: the network is essentially a static architecture and is basically self-sufficient in the form of redundant protocols. In other words, network engineers can have a "set it and forget it" mentality. This is no longer the case. In the dynamic network processing flow, push strategy and provide new resources, so that engineers waste a lot of time on repetitive tasks, therefore, engineers must learn network automation skills to reduce workload.
Hyper-converged system
Hyper-convergence is the integration of computing, data storage and network functions into a unified system. Network engineers need to understand the management tools used to deploy and operate hyper-converged systems, and understand how hyper-converged systems work from one end of the technology stack to the other, so that the system can be optimized for the applications running on it.
The above is an introduction to the 8 skills required by enterprise network engineers.
VeCloud is a technological innovation enterprise that provides cloud exchange network services for enterprises as its core business. It has 30 data center nodes around the world, more than 200 POP nodes, and serves more than 300 major customers, involving finance, Internet, games, AI, Education, manufacturing, multinational companies and other industries. http://www.vecloud.com