Q/A with itacs GmbH's Kai Wilke - DevCentral's Featured Member for February
Kai Wilke is a Principal Consultant for IT Security at itacs GmbH – a German consulting company located in Berlin City specializing in Microsoft security solutions, SharePoint deployments, and customizations as well as classical IT Consulting. He is also a 2017 DevCentral MVP and DevCentral’s Featured Member for February! For almost 20 years in IT, he’s constantly explored the evens and odds of various technologies, including different operating systems, SSO and authentication services, RBAC models, PKI and cryptography components, HTTP-based services, proxy servers, firewalls, and core networking components. His focus in these areas has always been security related and included the design, implementation and review of secure and high availability/high performance datacenters. DevCentral got a chance to talk with Kai about his work, life and mastery of iRules. DevCentral: You’ve been a very active contributor to the DevCentral community and wondered what keeps you involved? Kai: Working with online communities has always been an important thing for me and it began long time ago within the good old Usenet and the predecessor of the Darknet. Before joining the F5 community, I was also once an honored member of the Microsoft Online Community and was five times awarded as a Microsoft MVP for Enterprise Security and Microsoft-related firewall/proxy server technologies. My opinion is that if you want to become an expert for a certain technology or product, you should not just learn THE-ONE straight-forward method fetched from manuals, guides or even exams. Instead, you have to dive deeply into all of those edge scenarios and learn all the uncountable ways to mess the things up. And dealing with questions and problems of other peers is probably the best catalyst to gain that kind of experience. Besides of that, the quality of the DevCentral content and the knowledge of other community members are absolutely astonishing. It makes simply a lot of fun for me to work within the DevCentral community and to learn every day a little bit more… DC: Tell us a little about the areas of BIG-IP expertise you have. KW: Over the years, I successfully implemented BIG-IP LTM, APM, ASM, and DNS Service deployments for our customers. Technologically, I internalized TMOS and its architecture very well and I pretty much learned how to write simple but also somewhat complex iRules to control the delivery of arbitrary data on their way from A to B in any possible fashion. DC: You are a Principal Consultant for IT Security at itacs GmbH - a German consulting company. Can you describe your typical workday? KW: Because of my history with Microsoft related infrastructures, my current workload is pretty versatile. Many of my current projects are still settled in the Microsoft / Windows system environment and are covering the design and review of security related areas. Right now, I’m working with several DAX companies and also LaaS, PaaS and SaaS service providers to analyze their Active Directory and System Management infrastructures and to design and implement a very unique, fundamental and comprehensive security concept to counter those dreaded PtH (Pass-the-Hash) and APT (Advance Persistent Threat) attacks we are facing these days. Over the last years, my F5 customer base has periodically grown so I would say my work is a 50:50 mix right now. I do F5 workshops, designs, implementations, second and third level support as well as configuration reviews and optimization of existing environments. I work with some big web 2.0 customers that have the demand to pretty much exhaust all the capabilities of an F5. This challenges me as a network architect and as an ADC developer. I realize every day that working with F5 products makes so much more fun than any Microsoft product I have ever dealt with. So in the future, I will even more put my focus on F5! DC: Describe one of your biggest BIG-IP challenges and how DevCentral helped in that situation. KW: In my opinion, the F5 products themselves are not that challenging – but sometimes the underlying technologies and the detailed project requirements are. But as long as those requirements can be drawn and explained on a sheet of paper, I am somewhat confident that the BIG-IP platform is able to support the requirements – thanks to the F5 developers who have created a platform which is not purely scenario driven but rather supports a comprehensive list of RFC standards which can be combined as needed. For an example, one of my largest customers operates an affiliate resource tracking system with three billion web requests per day with a pretty much aggressive session setup rate during peak hours. I have designed and implemented their BIG-IP LTM platform to offload SSL-encryption and the TCP-connection handling to various backend systems using well selected and performance optimized settings. Other scenarios require slightly more complex content switching, the selective use of pre-authentication and/or combination with IDS/IPS systems. To support those requirements, I developed a very granular and scalable iRule administration framework which is able to simplify the configuration by using rather easy-to-use iRule configuration files (operated by non TCL developers) which will then trigger the much more complex iRule code (written and tested by TCL developers) as needed. The latest version of my iRule administration framework (which is currently under testing/development) will be able to support a couple thousand websites on a single Virtual Server, where each websites can trigger handcrafted TCL code blocks as needed, but without adding linear or even exponential overhead to the system as the regular iRule approaches would do. The core and the configuration files of the latest version are heavily based on TCL procedures to create a very flexible code base and also conditional control structures, but completely without calling any TCL procedures during runtime to boost the performance dramatically. Sounds interesting? Then stay tuned, I am sure I will publish this framework to the CodeShare once it’s stable enough… 😉 DC: Lastly, if you weren’t an IT admin – what would be your dream job? Or better, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up? KW: I was typing my first assembler code out of a C64 magazine at the age of 10, so I really wanted to be a developer and/or IT admin since then. But besides of my current job, I can also imagine being a racecar driver. I really have petrol in my blood and pretty much enjoy driving on the German Autobahn. As an alternative, I could also imagine being a cook. I really love cooking and enjoy awesome food! DC: Thanks Kai! Just don't fire up that sterno while shifting gears!! Check out all of Kai’s DevCentral contributions and check out their blog websites: ops365.de, flow365.de and brandmysharepoint.de.DevCentral'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 TwitterDevCentral's Featured Member for February - Edouard Zorrilla
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 MVPEdouard Zorrillais our Featured Member for February! He's been helping many other members with some great tips so let's catch up with Edouard! DevCentral: First, please explain to the DC community a little about yourself, what you do and why it is important. Edouard: I am a Professional Engineer licensed in the Province of Alberta, Canada. I have been working in the IT industry for over 20 years now. I am specialized in the Network Security scope. That being said, I like working in the Network Security because keeping information safe it is important for organizations our communities as well. DevCentral: You’ve been an active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved? Edouard: I find the community to be a good place to find answers and knowledge. There is also people with plenty experience willing to help other members and share their experience. DevCentral: Tell us a little about the technical expertise you have. Edouard: I have been working in the IT sector for over 20 years now, and in F5 Networks technologies for the last 10 years. DevCentral: You are a Network Analyst at ASEBP. 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? Edouard: My typical workday is basically to enhance the security posture at our organization. The F5 Infrastructure has proven to be very flexible and capable to meet our expectations. The pandemic has basically moved all employees working remotely, and now most of the staff continue working remotely using F5 security gateways to terminate the SSL VPN tunnel. DevCentral: Do you have any F5 Certifications? If so, why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career? Edouard: I have my F5 DNS certification recently achieved. Those certifications have been a factor to advance on my career while showing the employers that I am capable to support and manage their networks. That is why I now plan to challenge the BIG-IP ASM exam DevCentral: Describe one of your biggest Customer challenges and how the community helped in that situation. (Does not necessarily have to be DevCentral) Edouard: One of the biggest challenges we had was to provide a fast and secure VPN access when the pandemic broke. We had been able to accomplish those requirements using BIG-IP APM. 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? Edouard: When I saw the Star Wars saga, I wanted to build those star ships. That seemed to be very exciting. ---Thanks Edouard! The DevCentral Community really appreciate your willingness to share with our Members. Connect and Follow on Social: Edouard on LinkedIn ASEBP on LinkedIn ASEBP on TwitterDevCentral's Featured Member for March - Lionel Deval
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. First time DevCentral MVP Lionel Devalis our Featured Member for March! Let's learn more about Lionel! DevCentral: First, please explain to the DC community a little about yourself, what you do and why it is important. Lionel: Hi folks! My name is Lionel Deval and I work as a Security Engineer for ITS Services (ITS Group). I live in France and I have been passionate about security and F5 technologies for the past few years. I started my IT career as a network administrator in the financial sector. After 10 years in the network world, I was going round in circles and I needed a new challenge. Therefore I decided to take a turn in my career by moving into security and F5 solutions. In the DC community, I try to help members as much as possible in the Q&A section, hopefully one day, I will bring my own contribution to the Code Share section, but as for now I just use the available resources. When I am not working, I enjoy hanging around with my ice hockey team and my family. I also like brewing beer and playing online poker during the weekend. DevCentral: You’ve continued to be an active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved? Lionel: DevCentral is a real treasure; the amount of information, knowledge and solutions someone can find there is huge! It is a place of mutual help and sharing and one of the biggest active vendor’s communities that I know of. I really like the quote "Knowledge is nothing if it’s not shared". It means a lot to me, I think that in any learning process it is important to give back some of the knowledge acquired because it is very instructive and rewarding. For all those reasons, I like to participate and help the members of this community. DevCentral: Tell us a little about the technical expertise you have. Lionel: Over the years, I have successfully implemented and deployed different types of F5 BIG-IP, hardware or VE platforms with BIG-IP modules likes LTM, ASM, APM and DNS Service for our customers. I also have expertise in BIG-IQ. I was trained on all these modules, so I can say that I am quite comfortable with them but my favorite BIG-IP product is ASM, due to my security specialization. DevCentral: You are a Security Engineer at ItsGroup. 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? Lionel: As a security engineer and technical specialist of F5 technologies, I assist customers in building and developing their projects based on F5 security solutions to secure their applications and infrastructure. My days are very interesting, the advantage with F5 solutions is that you cannot get bored of this technology, I learn new thing every single day. My typical working day is split between manage my emails, attending project and architecture meetings, and troubleshooting. Obviously, I also regularly take a look at DevCentral to see what is happening there, and when time allows, I try to keep myself informed on the latest features offered by F5 by participating in the various webinars. The pandemic has somewhat transformed the way we work, we now work remotely and I have had to set up a workspace at home. I consider myself happy and aware of how lucky I am, continued working during lockdown and I can therefore look to the future with serenity, which is not the case for everyone. Initially maintaining a work-life balance was a bit complicated, but I soon realized that I have to discipline myself and manage my working rhythm to avoid spilling over into family life. DevCentral: Do you have any F5 Certifications? If so, why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career? Lionel: Yes, I am an F5 Certified BIG-IP Administrator. I have to pass the F5 301a at the end of March and plan to keep on with the certification race to try and get the Holy Grail F5-CSE Security! F5 Certifications provide a high level of expertise, they provide global knowledge on F5 solutions, and on how to offer the best product choices and solutions according to the customer’s needs. They are therefore essential to me in order to provide evidence of my skills to our clients. DevCentral: Describe one of your biggest Customer challenges and how the community helped in that situation. Lionel: My biggest Customer challenge was to build an F5 solutions WAF with two levels of analysis, and afterwards migrate with my team about fifteen applications from an old WAF solution to this new one in a fairly short time. During this project, DevCentral has been a great help to receive feedback, tips, and advice from ASM users on how to achieve the best configuration. 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? Lionel: When I was a kid, Indiana Jones fascinated me, I dreamed of being an archaeologist, going on adventures, travelling and discovering treasures. Today, when I see the projects that I work on sometimes, the time I spend searching or digging for solutions or root cause, I tell myself that the dream and the vision that I had as a kid are not very far after all 😉 ---Thanks Lionel!We really appreciate your willingness to share with the DevCentral Community. Stay connected with Lionel and ITS Services on social media: ITS Group S.A. on LinkedIn ITS Services on LinkedIn ITS Group S.A. on Twitter ITS Services on TwitterDevCentral'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 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 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 August - Tofunmi Olorunju
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 MemberTofunmi Olorunjuis our Featured Member for August! He's been helping many other members with some great tips so let's catch up with Tofunmi!DevCentral'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 June - Aubrey King
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. This month, for only the second time, we're featuring an F5er! Why? Because Aubrey just joined the DevCentral Team and we are excited to have him!! F5 DevCentral Solution ArchitectAubrey Kingis our Featured Member for June!Let's catch up with Aubrey!
