DevCentral's Featured Member for July - Enes Afsin Al
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 MVP Enes Afsin Al is our Featured Member for July! Let's catch up with Enes Al!
DevCentral: First, please explain to the DC community a little about yourself, what you do and why it is important.
Enes Al: I work in Istanbul as a System and Security Engineer/Consultant. I started my business life at Netsys IT Services in 2017. I have been working with F5 products since 2019 and providing installation, maintenance and consultancy services.
I usually don't sleep at night, and I like night works. I mostly spent my time with my computer with working on my own individual process projects. In my free times, I spend time with my friends, and I visit historical places.
DevCentral: You’ve continued to be an active contributor in the DevCentral community. What keeps you involved?
Enes Al: While investigating the our customer's issue, I found answers in DevCentral. After a certain time I realized that there is an active community and I looked at the questions page frequently. Afterwards, I started to answer what I knew from the questions asked, and investigated what I did not know. I gained experience with these questions and investigates. The DevCentral Community has helped me a lot in learning about F5 products and iRules. When I have time, I try to answer the questions, and investigate the answers.
DevCentral: Tell us a little about the technical expertise you have.
Enes Al: At first, I had worked with the network and firewall technologies. Nowadays, my main working areas are Load Balancing, SSL-VPN, and Web Application Firewall. I provide installation and post-installation support for F5 products. I also like migration from other products to F5.
DevCentral: How is the DevCentral MVP experience?
Enes Al: I've been a DevCentral member for about 2 years, and this year I was honored as MVP for the first time. Being MVP increased my motivation. I am happy to receive it and to be part of such a awesome community.
DevCentral: You are a System and Security Engineer at Netsys Bilisim. 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?
Enes Al: Netsys was founded in 2017 by a team with over 15 years of experience in project development and consultation for hundreds of corporate companies; also with experience in providing educational services by organizing more than 10.000 individuals. As a system and security engineer at Netsys, I consult some main projects with important private and public companies in F5 solutions. Regarding those projects, daily operations usually made by remote access. In some cases, I'd need to visit the customer on site. Also, I create some special workshops for companies' IT departments, which gives me total motivation to share my knowledge with others and have qualified customers with that knowledge transfer. Daily operations and workshops can describe as my main task for my workday.
We are all getting used to the short-term policies being put into place by governments and businesses around the world to stay safe and reduce the impact of COVID-19. With remote working companies became more flexible and that creates the extra need for safety precautions about their networks. On that point, I can say my daily routine became busier with consulting those companies and organizations.
DevCentral: Do you have any F5 Certifications? If so, why are these important to you and how have they helped with your career?
Enes Al: The F5 Certification Program is different from other vendors. The exam includes topics you know and need to know. I currently have BIG-IP CA certificate. I passed the 301a exam last month, and I am preparing for the 301b exam for LTM specialist certificate. The other 30x certification exams are on my to-do list for this year. I think being F5 certified has a role in new customer communication, and more valid than other certificates.
DevCentral: Describe one of your biggest Customer challenges and how the community helped in that situation.
Enes Al: Last year, while re-activating the license in our customer, we encountered a very rare bug. The standby APM device rebooted, and started with an empty config. It took over the active state and sent the empty configuration to the other device. Since there is no current configuration backup, we loaded the device from an very old backup file and configured it all night. There was a long interruption. I was new to BIG-IP APM at the time. The F5 articles and DevCentral questions/answers were very helpful when configuring APM profile.
DevCentral: Finally, when you were a kid – what did you want to be when you grew up?
Enes Al: When I was a kid, I had different dreams at different ages: Racing driver, ice hockey player, archaeologist... As I got older, I realized that these were only dreams. But if I wasn't doing what I do, I guess I would be web programmer/designer.
---Thanks Enes Al! We really appreciate your willingness to share with the DevCentral Community. Stay connected with Enes Al and Netsys Bilisim on social media: