Day One: Configuring SRX Series with J-Web

Uma: I was browsing different topics on the Matrix space, and found this Day One topic in the Product and Services space. Went through the existing booklet and talked to our team mates about this idea, came up with different titles, but finally had to choose this topic and teamed up with Mark Smallwood to start this booklet.

Mark: As the original Pubs manager for the initial SRX docs, and as the co-designer of the Design and Implementation Guide for J-series Services Routers which is no longer in print, I was interested in getting even more user-friendly information out there for Branch customers. In a previous life, I’d been a business development executive for a small startup called Embarcadero Technologies and spent many days presenting at trade shows, at customer sites, and pitching corporate purchasing committees. Our market was the Fortune 1000, so I am very familiar with customer expectations in the Enterprise market. Of course, I have a day job here at Juniper, so my time is limited, but when Patrick and Uma approached me about helping out on the Day One J-Web book, I saw it as a chance to help encourage Enterprise customers to get the most out of the SRX product line. Fortunately, my boss agreed, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Uma: Enterprise customers, Network administrators who are not familiar with JUNOS software. This booklet will be useful for those who prefer using GUI for installing, configuring and managing SRX service gateways

Mark: I really see this book as a boon to the man or woman who works at a small or medium sized business or branch office and has been tasked with managing the network. Usually that means that sometime in between changing toner cartridges and helping other employees remember their passwords, these folks are supposed to make sure the local network maintains connectivity to the mother ship, and that new employees can get connected quickly, and so on. So, these are the people who are often considered to be grunts but are actually the ones who keep everything running. The unsung heroes of the SMB market. They don’t have time to be experts at routing and security, so they need tools that, in effect, act as multipliers to anything they do. J-Web is one of those tools.

Uma: The reader will be able to understand how to connect to the device using J-Web via Win XP and Mac OSx, configure, monitor, maintain and diagnose the SRX Service Gateways.

Mark: I think the take away is that although this stuff is complex, it’s not rocket science. The reader needs a few real-world pointers to help them get a handle on the 20% of the tool that will help them accomplish 80% of their job. I think of it like those biology books in high school that had celluloid pages showing the nervous system, the circulatory system, and so on. Remember those? You’d lay down a page and suddenly you could see the nervous system highlighted. To me, the Day One books are like that. If you try to look at everything in the Junos documentation canon you can be completely overwhelmed. These books take one element and highlight it. That’s extremely valuable when you’re trying to solve one problem on the job.

Uma: The reader will be able to understand how to connect to the device using J-Web via Win XP and Mac OSx, configure, monitor, maintain and diagnose the SRX Service Gateways.

Mark: I’m hoping people will learn that even though Junos is incredibly powerful and can help you accomplish complex configuration and security tasks, it’s pretty easy to learn, especially if you take advantage of tools like J-Web.

Uma: I would recommend going through day one booklet on "Deploying SRX series services gateway" by Barny and for more in depth understand of JUNOS security series product architecture and feature sets please go through "JUNOS security" book by Rob Cameron and his team.

Mark: If readers are at all like me, they’ll want to read just about every other Day One book that’s available. It also seems to me that a lot of people using the SRX device will be interested in security, so I’d recommend reading the new Security guide from O’Reilly. Also, I think the Junos Enterprise Routing guide from O’Reilly is outstanding. And, if you’re one of those people who has to reconfig your router after you finish up showing somebody how to set up a printer in Windows, you may want to sneak off with Walter Goralski’s The Illustrated Network, so you can learn enough to get promoted back to the home office.

Uma: I myself took the initiative to do something different for this year and started to write this booklet.

Mark: My parents grew up in the Depression but education was incredibly important to them. We always had books in the house. My mother finally earned her GED at the age of 60, after raising 5 kids, and running a word processing department of 40 people for a major pharmaceutical company for 10 years. My dad never got a college degree, but went to law school anyway, passed the California bar at 33 years old, had a successful 23 year career as a trial lawyer, and went on to be the Presiding Judge of the Orange County Superior Court for many years. They made me into a learning junkie. As long as I’m learning something new, I’m happy.

Uma: Configuring the security features like Interfaces, Zones, Policies, and NAT on the SRX services gateway devices.

Mark: I’d have to say that the installation section was most fun for me. It involved a bit of sleuthing and plugging and unplugging cables before we could finally figure out just how to bring up the device and connect to it with J-Web. Also, I enjoyed working on the Troubleshooting chapter, and learning more about how to identify and solve MTU problems with Ping. Those parts of the book were like working on puzzles. Lots of fun.