Hi everyone,
Not really sure who has actually paid attention to my blog (obviously nobody in the last 8-9 years since I haven’t posted) but thought I’d post an update.
A lot has happened. I’ve been through 3 job changes (and a promotion!), I’ve been married and adopted 2 boys.
Do I still work on Drupal? No, after my first job change since posting about Drupal I spent a little over a year working on the PeopleSoft platform for the organization I worked for. After that position, I moved to another part of the state and took a job in the neighboring state just becoming a Windows Server Administrator then eventually transitioning to the Linux Server admin team and now… I work on both since I had a huge issue letting my Windows skills fade away. But hey, I work for a great company and have a supervisor that ‘gets it’.
What do I focus on these days if I’m not Drupal-ing or PeopleSoft-in? Well, when I was in the PeopleSoft job I had the opportunity to take a Puppet training course on campus where I became obsessed with a technology like I never had before. After moving to my new job in another state, they really didn’t have any sort of configuration management system for their Windows Servers. The Linux admins had been using Puppet Enterprise, but the Windows Admins were doing most things manually, with some things done via Group Policy. About 4 months in, I installed the Open Source version of Puppet on a CentOS vm and went to work writing Puppet code and facts to start managing the Windows environment and put in the request to extend the Puppet Enterprise environment for the Windows environment. Eventually the licenses were bought and I’ve been running with it ever since!
Do I only use Puppet Enterprise? I’ve been super fortunate in that I’ve had the opportunity to leverage other Puppet products such as Continuous Delivery for Puppet Enterprise and Puppet Comply. At this point in my career I am obsessed with automation. Sometimes I like to joke that my best quality as a sysadmin is that I’m lazy. I like to think of myself as the Puppet lead at our company, which probably isn’t far from the truth.
What are my plans for the future? As a strong support of Puppet, I want to start posting more about problems, solutions or whatever I do with Puppet, or start a podcast of some sort to talk about systems automation. I don’t really have a clear idea, but I hope at a minimum I will start posting on my blog more to discuss my experience.
Have a good one all!