My New Job
Published on 21 Mar 2006 · Filed in Personal · 403 words (estimated 2 minutes to read)I started work at ePlus Technology yesterday. I had originally thought that my first day would be on March 13, but things got delayed until the 20th. So far, things are going pretty well.
One of my first assignments is to get up to speed with VMware’s high-end products, ESX Server and VirtualCenter. I’m signed up for a VMware class in May and hope to be getting some hands-on experience with the products in the next week or so. Having already worked with GSX Server (soon to be replaced by VMware Server) fairly extensively, I don’t expect the learning curve for ESX Server to be too bad. I have a feeling that most people getting into ESX Server for the first time probably aren’t command-line people; I, on the other hand, sometimes feel like I live at the command line. I should feel pretty comfortable. I’ve managed to dig up some good resources with the organization as well; that’s one key advantage of working for a larger company.
I knew that integration of my PowerBook onto their corporate network would be a challenge, and I was right. I had spent a fair amount of time on my network making sure that everything was cross-platform, but not here. I’m going to be working first on universal e-mail access, so that I can use IMAP both inside and outside (without having to establish a VPN first). I haven’t quite worked out all the details yet, but I imagine it will involve the use of the Perdition IMAP proxy and some DNS cunning. I also need to get LDAP queries from the Mac OS X Address Book working against the corporate Global Address Book, so that I don’t have to add a bunch of people manually to my address book. Snerdware, whose Groupcal product I do use (even now) to push iCal data up into my Exchange calendar, also offers a product for helping with that (called AddressX), but I’d rather avoid having to purchase yet another license if at all possible. (And yes, I know that the Address Book has an option to synchronize with Exchange.) Unfortunately, all of these changes will have to be done on some sort of local scope; that’s one key disadvantage of working for a larger comapny.
All in all, I’m excited about the opportunities that are ahead of me, particularly with regards to learning some new products. Stay tuned!