This week I attended and event organized by Cisco TAC in Krakow.

I’ve been in may Cisco events (Live, PVT, Pint etc.) but It was the first time for me at a TAC workshop and I was curious about it.

The Agenda

Agenda was clear: tree days with TAC engineers presenting best practices for installation and configuration with a clear focus on troubleshooting methods and tools.

I was not disappointed by the contents: marketing was reduced to minimum, all the presenters were skilled TAC engineers and all the sessions were very detailed.

I shared my opinion with other fellow network/security engineers attending the event and everyone agreed we learned many tools that will make our life easier on the field.

Well done Cisco!

The event included a visit to the SOC where security incidents of customers are managed.

Location

The location of the event was Cisco TAC offices in Krakow, you can find many pictures online HERE .

Krakow is a small city with a nice center and cheap restaurants and transports. The weather did not helped but I had a chance to enjoy a walk in the central square and the streets nearby.

The CCIE wall

You can say TAC in Krakow has some skills: an entire wall with their CCIE certificates is there as demonstration. Many of them have multiple CCIEs, it makes me start thinking if I should go for a second track ;)

Wrap up

The Cisco team demonstrates again that they really want to help their partners and customers providing all the information necessary to do a good job on the field.

I can’t wait for FTD to reach the feature parity with ASA to start deploying more boxes. Looks like the BU and TAC are working together to get soon to the result, I expect some announcements before the end of the year. Can’t say more, some topics are covered by NDA.

I was happy to meet some fellow network engineers, don’t forget to follow me on twitter , I enjoy a chat and a beer to discuss experiences and opinions about the wonderful world of packets.