vDM Challenge 1 and so it begins

I was very surprised to see in my inbox a few weeks ago an exciting email from Eric Wright (@discoposee) to say I had been selected to be one of the season 4 challenge candidates

Firstly this is a great opportunity and I am loving it so far. I should have planned better or at least checked that the weekend it started I at least had 3G as I was camping and no WiFi for miles. The joys of living in the rural part of the UK.  Either way I manged to get the challenge brief document downloaded after the live stream. I the proceeded to start my design off told school in my head and on whatever paper I had with me.

I am looking forward to the defense part already but I know I will probably choke with only the 2 minutes I have so I hope I have put in enough this time round so I can get through to the next heat. That way I hope I can show off some more skills and learn some at the same time.

In regards to my design below if I had more time I would have investigated more networking elements and planned out the VLANs. Due to time constraints I have had to exclude some elements and provide a more high level design in areas. In the next challenge I will ask the judges more questions as I have made way too many assumptions such as processing power needed, having access to the internet and even an email system! I would also prefer to plan out VM placement so I can show the naming conventions and plan for backups/recovery better with justification. I feel I am also missing much of the automation element and its work flows or even demonstrating these at a high level. I also need to learn Docker or Photon OS more.

Fingers crossed and lets hope everyone already sent in their submissions in before they read this post!

EDIT:- Already on the drive home have I already realised that I have missed a major part to my switch layout and should have more… also I didn’t even think about AV! Let just hope there are no more viruses out there…. time to go cry before the judges questions….

vDM Season 4 – Challange 1 Back to Earth – Gareth Edwards