Weekly Reflections - drewwbikk/capstone GitHub Wiki
Week 2 Reflection
(Beginning of Sprint 1)
Summary of accomplishments, tasks worked on, tasks completed
This week was not the most involved week for me. My partner had surgery this past week and required around the clock care for the first week post-op. Therefore, I designed my Sprint 1 to allow me to have a week where I could spend less time. I coordinated with Adam about getting my vCenter environment set up, and finalized which systems I'll need to complete the sprint. Following that, I compiled and edited documentation together I have previously written that will guide me through the initial system setup, so I'll be ready to push forward in Week 2 when my environment is ready, and be able to work efficiently so all of my tasks are completed by the end of the Sprint.
Issues encountered and how you addressed them
The only issue I encountered was when I was compiling documentation for my initial environment setup. My previous tech journals were missing information or screenshots in some spots, so I had to go back into my previous class resources and spend extra time looking through labs and other resources, when if I documented more thoroughly the first time, I wouldn't have had to spend time on this.
Skills acquired or strengthened and lessons learned
This week, I looked back on my previous tech journals from my SYS-2X5 for the first time since writing them. While I remember the basics of setting up an environment, I don't remember everything, which is where my tech journals come in handy. After looking at those and having to edit some of them, adding information to help me in the coming weeks, I learned how to better write documentation in the future. It helped me understand what parts to emphasize, where screenshots would have been helpful, and where more detail would have been helpful. I believe this will help me when I document my environment setup over the next two weeks.
Thoughts/ideas that may impact the next week of work on your Capstone
This will impact the next week of work on my Capstone by allowing me to spend less time on the initial setup of my environment, and spending more time making sure my environment is as complete and "full" as possible. I could add more AD users, groups, OUs, or fileshares/files. I could spend time mounting fileshares, or finding other ways to emulate a small enterprise environment more accurately.
Week 3 Reflection
Summary of accomplishments, tasks worked on, tasks completed
This week, my systems were deployed on vCenter. I configured networking on fw01 and installed ADDS and created my andrew.local forest. I created the ad users (andrew and andrew-adm). I also set up wks01 and configured initial networking (will use DHCP in the future) to use the web configuration in pfSense.
Issues encountered and how you addressed them
One issue encountered this week was that I did not have a WAN gateway address. I emailed Joe Eastman after my update meeting and he provided me with the IP I needed to get internet connectivity in my network.
Another issue I encountered was when I was creating my AD Forest. ad01 kept reporting CPU usage thresholds and would become unresponsive. I didn't have a snapshot of ad01, so I thought I would have to get a new ad01 deployed. But, after two hard resets, ad01 successfully booted up with the forest successfully installed.
Skills acquired or strengthened and lessons learned
I learned that I should have taken a snapshot of my ad01 machine before attempting my ADDS and Forest installation, just in case it went wrong. I will now be utilizing snapshots more often in the future of this project.
Thoughts/ideas that may impact the next week of work on your Capstone
I will be taking "base" snapshots this upcoming week of all of my crucial infrastructure so that if there is a critical error in the coming weeks, I will have somewhere to revert to and won't have to start from scratch, and I won't have to reach out to Joe or Adam to get a system re-deployed.
Week 4 Reflection
(End of Sprint 1)
Summary of accomplishments, tasks worked on, tasks completed
This week, I configured all domain services (DNS, DHCP, File Services). I finalized wks01's networking to use DHCP, and ensured that DHCP and DNS worked on all machines. I configured web01 as a simple web server, and ensured that it could be accessed by hostname internally. I set up fs01 (using mgmt01) to host a simple file share, and then created a GPO to automatically mount the share as a network drive for all users in the domain.
Issues encountered and how you addressed them
One issue I encountered this week was with mounting my file share. I could not get it to actually show up, even though I checked and the GPO was being executed. I went through about an hour of troubleshooting, and then finally realized that I was pointing to the network location incorrectly. The actual folder name is default_share, and the share name is File Server. I was trying to point to the share through the network using the actual folder name, when I needed to be using the share name. It was a simple fix, but while encountered, I learned a lot about how to diagnose GPOs and how mounted network drives work as well.
Skills acquired or strengthened and lessons learned
While dealing with the issue above, I learned how to diagnose GPOs, and ensure they were executed successfully, or, if not, view the error(s) that occurred. On top of this, I also learned about the different options and setting when mounting a drive, and what they all mean/do.
Thoughts/ideas that may impact the next week of work on your Capstone
Next week, I'll be starting Sprint 2, which is all work in AWS. I'll be using my own account and getting reimbursement through Champlain. This is so that I can use a VPN to connect my AWS network with my on-premise network. The education accounts (through Vocareum), have limitations on VPNs; therefore, I cannot use those with the education credits provided. However, I will still be using free-tier where possible, and minimizing costs, since actual computational and storage load will be minimal for the demonstration.