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Chrystal Taylor

Head Geek

Chrystal Taylor is a dedicated technologist with nearly a decade of experience and has built her career by leveraging curiosity to solve problems, no matter the size, industry, or client. Whether tinkering with the family computer, or inflicting general destruction in MS-DOS Tank Wars, Taylor has always been a geek. Taylor is a SolarWinds deployment veteran who’s built a successful IT career by translating client needs into optimized and performant systems. She loves customizing current deployments to ensure systems grow in tandem with user needs. She’s achieved several SolarWinds certifications. A THWACK® MVP since 2011, she understands the power of community and the SolarWinds commitment to its users. In her role as the Global Services Team Lead for Loop1 Systems, Taylor was the troubleshooting sniper, handling technical escalation for the engineering team, providing break/fix and augmentation support, and assisting clients as the subject matter expert for SolarWinds® Orion® Platform and Security Event Manager (SEM) (formerly Log & Event Manager) products. Her focus on capacity planning, server architecture, and troubleshooting allow her to attack any issue on multiple fronts.

Posts Featuring Chrystal Taylor

A Guide to Enterprise Cost Containment for Monitoring Pros

In this enterprise cost containment series, we’ve tackled a range of topics from cloud to professional services and more. Now, I want to dive into the topic you may have…

Upgrade Better, Faster, Stronger

Because of the recent cyberattack, we’ve asked you to update your Orion Platform several times. While these updates are necessary for the safety and performance of your environment, we understand…

The Case for Upgrading — SolarWinds TechPod 035

The relationship IT professionals have with upgrades can sometimes only be described as “fraught.” Reasons range from the cost in terms of time and lost opportunity to “nothing in that…

Protecting Your Data Privacy

Protecting your identity is becoming more and more difficult. Though many people don’t stop to consider it, even the most minor conveniences can go hand in hand with an incredible…

IT Pro Day 2020: You Were Built for This — SolarWinds TechPod 032

Every year, on the third Tuesday of September, we celebrate IT Pro Day – a day set aside to recognize all tech pros and the work they do. For some obvious reasons, this…

The Importance of “Soft” Skills in the Digital Age

First, I hate the term “soft” skills. I prefer we call them essential or non-technical skills or even essential non-technical skills, as that would be more accurate and not have…

Celebrating IT Pro Day From a New Vantage Point

This year has been a real whirlwind, hasn’t it? On top of all the 2020 world craziness, I started a new job this year as a Head Geek at SolarWinds.…

Hey, [Insert Family/Friend Name Here], Let’s Talk About Online Security

2020 keeps on proving the old adage, “It gets worse before it gets better.” We still seem to be in the “worse” stage. If you’ve been paying attention to the…

Gaming Groups in a Remote World

As we all come to terms with quarantine and shelter-in-place orders being extended for longer than most prepared for (both emotionally and in terms of our stash of snacks), and…

Avant-Garde vs. Current Tech

Let’s look at your phone for a second. Do you have the newest model? If not, you probably know someone who does or who’s waited in line overnight to get…