My name is Matjaž Žnidar and I am techie!
With more than 20 year of IT experience, mostly in Microsoft environments, I have seen many issues and have been delighted to have solved many of them. I do not count myself as ordinary system administrator, but have always flourished at the toughest tech issues, new discovered BUGs and spreading my knowledge to my colleagues and peers. I have seen many environments from one-man-band sized companies, which I supported at previous employer (and in my free time) to enterprise with more than 150k employees, where I am employed at the time. I had opportunity to work also in Linux environment, at least so much, that I am not complete novice. For several years I have been responsible for network, where I got involved with Cisco routers, switches, APs and have implemented Cisco VoIP for 30 locations and 600 employees. I was also one of the first in our enterprise group to suggest, plan and finally implemented MPLS network for our branches, where others were still insisting at FrameRelay at the time.
I enjoyed very much to work with Operations Management Suite (OMS) from its very beginning on (at that time still known as System Center Advisor) and have also presented its power on several occasions. This knowledge has proven to be very useful also in my current role, where Splunk is used. To me query language from OMS and Splunk look suspiciously alike and I am not sure, who was inspired by whom 🙂
Lately, I am specializing in IT security, but am still helping our IT with Converged and HyperConverged infrastructure as well as with Storage and network related topics.
Which technologies I like to explore currently in depth?
This list can be very long, but let me point out only the most important ones:
- IT security – from governance, vulnerability assessment, penetration testing to SIEM and user awareness training;
- Hyper Converged Infrastructure – I have been one of the first people in Slovenia to implement Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) in to production. Through this process I had some very interesting obstacles and what helped me to get to know the technology in depth;
- Storage – I am the closest to NetApp, where I like to go very deep into technology of how data is written to physical layers, where are the limits of hardware and how WAFL actually works;
- Agile principles in infrastructure – my goal here is to automate whatever is possible, help implementing Infrastructure as a code, streamline whole development lifecycle, include security in from early beginning to very end of application development and so help to achieve continuous and automated application delivery, faster ROI built in application security.
My passion is knowledge sharing!
I would say, that my biggest passion is knowledge sharing. I like to present, what I have learned while investigating, implementing or even failing certain technology. I see this mainly as 2 way process, because, while preparing for a presentation, writing a blog, talking to my peers or looking for an answer to specially difficult questions from audience, has always helped me to get deeper and more profound knowledge. I am also very fortunate, that I am working for an enterprise company, where contracts with vendors (like Microsoft, NetApp, IBM… to mention only the biggest) enable me access to best engineers, product management teams and highly qualified and experienced support stuff. I remember, several times waiting for long lasting process to complete in course of incident solving, that I was “bombarding” support engineer at the other end with countless questions. I do not remember a single case, where I was not able to get and answer. Most my questions were answered immediately, but to several I also got answer couple of days later.
This is also what helps me grow. I might not have answer to each question I get from my peers, but give me some time and I will do everything to get an answer.
In private life…
Yes, I also have a private life. I live with my wife and 3 beautiful children next to my parents farm in a countryside near Celje, Slovenia. You can often find me working outside or in the forest. In my spare time, I like to climb mountains, visit friends, other countries and most of all, I like to ski.