When you evaluate a monitoring solution for your environment, consider the solution’s ability to integrate with other applications and services. Most notably, a monitoring solution should be able to integrate with an IT service management (ITSM) system to automate the ticketing process. You’ll realize …
In a previous article, I wrote about the virtualization administrator’s interest in choosing between the two operating system activation methods Microsoft® offers: Multiple Activation Keys (MAK) and Key Management Service (KMS). Although there are a lot of benefits to using KMS over MAK, one …
Virtualization is an amazing and valuable tool for so many reasons. I’ve been a proponent of the concept since GSX server, and early Workstation products. In the early days, I used to use it as a fresh image to load on a workstation for …
Whether your IT operation is a small-scale endeavor or a web-scale enterprise, systems monitoring plays a critical role in the delivery of your services. The ability to quickly and accurately assess the state and health of your infrastructure and applications is no longer a …
The average total cost of a data breach right now is $3.79 million, according to the 2015 Cost of Data Breach Study: Global Analysis. Cyber attacks are one of the top reasons for this exorbitant sum. Hackers attack websites to gather commercial information, consumer information, …
Monitoring is a lot of work. A monitoring system is a service unto itself, and like other applications it needs care, feeding, configuration, databases, DBAs, patching, and maintenance. Though it often prevents the loss of revenue, it doesn’t generate revenue except in rare circumstances. …
I think we’ve all had that moment at 3:00 a.m. over the weekend when we wish our monitoring and management systems would just shut up. The UPS in rack 4’s battery life is at 40%, we GET it. But we’ve also had that moment …
Earlier this year I had the opportunity to speak at VMWorld in San Francisco. The session title was Using Virtual SAN to Maximize Database Performance, and in that session I spent time focusing on performance as well as recovery. Why would recovery be a …
The role of information technology inside of corporations is not new; it has existed for decades. With each passing year we see acceleration in the speed and complexity of changes to our roles as IT professionals. Industries as a whole tend to resist change. …
We live in a hectic world of day-to-day operations and aggressive business requirements that must be facilitated and made possible by IT — often in a vacuum. And we do all this while being expected to keep operations running consistently, repeatedly, and without interruption. …