These past few years you’ve heard a lot about the cloud. The cloud that’s always been there has a new approach for companies. Run your applications directly from the cloud…
Hybrid IT
Troubleshooting SQL Server, Part 2 : Inside or outside? Error or Not?
In the popular white paper entitled Troubleshooting SQL Server Wait Statistics, I take you through three scenarios in which a wait stats-only approach is insufficient or even harmful to detecting, diagnosing,…
Great Advice on Monitoring Amazon RDS For MySQL From Datadog
Our friends at Datadog just published an insanely great three part series on monitoring Amazon RDS for MySQL using Datadog. You should go read that now.
Windows Guest Licensing: To KMS or Not?
To better combat software piracy, Microsoft introduced License Activation with Windows XP/Server 2003; however, activation was pretty much implied and automatic if you had volume license keys. When these keys,…
The Challenges of Network Virtualization Technologies
Network virtualization, software defined network (SDN), and network function virtualization (NFV) have taken the communication industry by storm. They are no longer buzzwords; the industry is seriously focusing and converging…
How to Prevent a Data Breach from SQL Injection Attacks
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, or targeted profiles.
Looking Backward to Look Forward
“Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past” -unspecified “wise men” quoted by Niccolò Machiavelli With so many articles out there telling me how SDN will change the…
How to Explain Virtualization to Newbies
In the world of enterprise architecture, many parts of our daily conversations are taken for granted. We talk about virtualization, vMotion®, Storage vMotion, Replication, IOPS, and so very many other…
What If You Can’t Trace End-to-End?
A lot of monitoring systems have a goal of end-to-end tracing, from “click to disk” or something similar. This is usually implemented by adding some kind of tracing information to…
Monitoring: How and Why We Do It
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. Last, it requires vigilance and attention to detail that is often overlooked or impossible in a busy IT environment. So why even bother?