Systems

Microsoft Hyper-V is a powerful virtualization solution used by many enterprise data centers across the world. Although it’s a robust and high-performing tool, you can implement some best practices and tips to optimize your Hyper-V performance. Following these tips can help reduce Hyper-V performance issues and enhance the virtual machine (VM) workloads running in your…

Maintaining your business data center is a critical part of operations, as this is where your computing and network equipment is concentrated. In the data center, you can store data, process information, and distribute data back to the business as it needs to be accessed. Monitoring and optimizing your data center can have a large…

Windows Server is typically installed on heavy-use servers, which act as the backbone of many IT applications and services. If this is true of your organization, it’s critical to stay on top of Windows Server performance monitoring. Finding a tool to act as a Windows Server performance monitor is vitally important, and choosing the right…

Virtualization technology is rapidly spreading, with many enterprises having infrastructure heavily comprised of virtual machines, servers, and storage. These kinds of virtualization are created with technology called a “virtual machine manager” or a “hypervisor,” and this technology can (and should) be monitored and managed with other software. Using monitoring software like SolarWinds® Virtualization Manager or…

If you’re working in a large enterprise or business setting, monitoring your network, servers, and workstations is essential for maintaining productivity, reputation, and service levels. With many networks primarily using Windows devices, finding high-quality Windows monitoring tools can be critical. In several companies, it’s not only employee devices using Windows operating systems—in many cases, the…

There are literally hundreds of possible types of log sources around your environment and choosing which bubble to the top of your IT consciousness can be difficult. In a job where everything seems to be a top priority, understanding all the log types and sources available for selection can be daunting. In your environment, some…

Information Technology (IT) comes with plenty of acronyms and it’s not always easy to keep them straight. This is especially true when the definitions overlap, as with IT Services Management (ITSM) and the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). Understanding the ITIL and ITSM difference is important for businesses thinking about their approach to IT, especially if…

If a computer or device is overloaded or working too hard, its productivity and performance will be affected. By checking, monitoring, and testing server load, you’re better able to evaluate server resources and ensure they’re sufficient for running your applications and processes. Server load testing gives you insight into a computer’s limits, which allows you…

In the early days of networking, anyone who could write a program could write, send, and receive messages over the network. The only problem was these various programs often weren’t speaking the same language. If a company created a data transfer program declaring every session must begin with a certain message, the only companies able…

Businesses typically rely on network storage setups, in the form of either network attached storage (NAS) or a storage area network (SAN). These can be harder to manage and monitor than simpler storage infrastructures. In many cases, especially for larger businesses, storage performance monitoring software is a must. In this article, I’ll focus on SANs….

Using a hybrid of public and private cloud computing, or a mix of cloud and on-premises solutions, is a great option for many companies. This approach provides the best of both worlds, encompassing flexibility, security, performance, and more. The challenge comes with hybrid cloud management, as this approach is more complex than having everything in…

Servers are essential when running a company, but it’s easy for those resources to sprawl. Server sprawl comes with having too many servers, which results in unnecessary complexity and inefficiency when those servers aren’t used to capacity. The issue doesn’t go away with virtualization, either. Virtual machine sprawl, or VM sprawl, is a problem for…

What is load balancing all about? Well, the truth is you can’t afford a web server overload—nobody can. A slow, faulty network can impact critical business services and result in a poor end-user experience. As external end users leave your site, profitability plummets. But external end users aren’t the only ones impacted. Every time an…

Databases are foundational to the operations of many modern businesses and organizations. They store information in tables, which authorized applications can then access, retrieve, or edit, depending on what information is needed and for what purpose. In practice, databases allow customers to see product details when shopping online and allow health care providers to keep…

Virtualization technology has been revolutionary in the world of server computing, and in a several other aspects of computing, including storage, applications, desktop virtualization, and cloud computing. The use of virtualization and cloud computing has given rise to several new, flexible services, such as infrastructure as a service (IaaS), software as a service (SaaS), and…

A server uptime report offers admins a way to view the status and availability of their servers. However, it can be time-consuming to create manual server uptime reports. The right uptime reporting tool can save your IT team time and hassle by measuring and displaying uptime metrics automatically. For a reliable uptime monitoring tool that…

Virtual infrastructure is vital to many business IT environments, with the potential to add significant efficiencies and cost savings if you deploy and use it properly. Physical infrastructure takes up a large amount of space and can be easily replaced with virtual infrastructure if you set it up correctly and follow best practices for managing…

These days, even business-critical applications are being virtualized, and with the increasing costs and complexity of data environments, it’s not surprising. Some estimate that large organizations are as much as 70% virtualized already, with no plans to go back to physical servers. Virtualization, however, introduces new challenges for the Oracle DBA, including getting visibility to…

Businesses generate huge quantities of logs, making manual log analysis a tedious task. There are many kinds of logs, including application logs, event logs, and security logs, and each one has a wide range of uses, from performance monitoring to troubleshooting to security issue detection. By implementing the right tools, you’ll streamline the process and…

As modern IT networks move away from physical systems and toward virtual ones, administrators have to adapt their monitoring and management processes. Standard network monitoring operations are becoming increasingly obsolete, as businesses adopt Microsoft Hyper-V tools and performance monitoring solutions to keep pace with virtual infrastructure. Hyper-V is in widespread use, with a significant number…

One of the most important components of successful internet service is the domain name system (DNS). This is what translates familiar network names into IP addresses machines can read, or IP addresses back to domain names. All web content and internet-based services rely on DNS, which is why you need to be able to easily…