Connor E. Jay

The Vision

While pursuing my B.S in Computer Networking and Cybersecurity at Champlain College, I recognized that classroom knowledge alone wouldn’t prepare me enough for the industry.

My “Independent Skills Development Environment” serves as my proving ground where I bridge the gap between my college’s classrooms and the industry. I can break things, fix them, and truly understand how networks operate at scale.

Why build a lab?

Most concepts in IT, networking, cybersecurity, etc seem straightforward until you try to implement them. Having a lab environment allows you to experience the real challenges that you would find in the industry.

The certifications I am seeking require hands-on experience with enterprise-grade equipment. In a college environment where you only work with virtual machines, you won’t be able to configure, troubleshoot or optimize a network with servers that provide services for hundreds of users.

This lab environment can be used to simulate real-world failure scenarios – and how to efficiently recover from those failures.

The picture above is from my Junior year of college.

A foundation set to become much more than what the following describes.

  • WatchGuard T80 Firewall – Next Generation Firewall, entryway into multi-vendor equipment
  • Cisco Catalyst C3560G Switches – PoE multilayer switches
  • Dell PowerEdge R730XD – 56 cores, 128GB RAM, 6TB storage.
    • Hosts an medium-sized Windows Server VM infrastructure set to grow even further
      • Redundant Domain Controllers / DNS Servers
      • Air-gapped Root CA and intermediate signing server
      • Network Policy Servers
    • Docker Containerization for various lab services eg. Immich Family Photography backups
    • GNS3 Virtual Machine for virtualized CCNP Enterprise simulations
  • Dell PowerVault NX3230 – 36TB dedicated VM storage array

Future Vision

My lab environment and my overall journey supports my long-term vision of giving back to my industry and those around me who made me the man I am today.

There have been times where I have had to fight for opportunities in life, and people have advocated for me when they did not have to.

Those people gave me a chance to show them that I could succeed in a professional environment. because of that, I strive to continue growing.