Chances are good that you’ve encountered the “build versus buy” dilemma at some point in your professional career. With the increased popularity of hosted IT and developer-facing SaaS, the decision to outsource IT functions or build and maintain them in-house is more complicated than ever. Unfortunately, many decision makers still allow their decisions to be…

Python applications have proven to be top notch when dealing with complex scientific or numeric problems. As Python applications become more dynamic and complex, there’s a need to monitor performance for better troubleshooting. Developers would want to monitor Python performance for several reasons. For instance, you’d want to be the first to notice any likelihood…

  <Syslog_output> <server> 192.168.1.1</server> </syslog_output> Many people are familiar with the above commands, which are used for forwarding syslog to the syslog server (192.168.1.1). However, do you know how syslog can be helpful? Read on to find out how and see some different use cases for enabling syslog in your infrastructure. The primary use of…

Amazon CloudWatch is a popular option for collecting system and performance metrics from your AWS resources.  For some services, it’s the only means available to collect badly needed metrics data. CloudWatch makes it trivially easy to fetch core system metrics like CPU, Network, and Disk, as well as more specialized metrics like queue-sizes and latency…

Have you ever needed to quickly set up a web server? Or have you been required to distribute a load among many nodes? In these situations, the solution is often NGINX. NGINX can perform both functions, as it’s a web server but can also work as a load balancer, an HTTP cache, or even an…

Django is a web framework used in a wide variety of websites. It just takes a quick web search to discover which large companies use it as a production platform. And the reason for this is simple—it lets developers quickly deploy a website. Some of Django’s features include security and scalability right out of the…

Since the release of SQL Server® 2017 on Linux®, DBAs have been waiting for a native release of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) on Linux. At this point, Microsoft has stated that they have no plans for a native Linux version of SSMS. However, they have just released a preview version of SQL Operations Studio,…

Database replication is an essential aspect of modern business that helps ensure data availability, consistency, and protection. As databases continue to grow and become more complex, it’s crucial to have an efficient way of managing and monitoring your replication software. In this post, we’ll dive into what database replication software is and why it’s vital…

Virtualization is supposed to provide consolidation and high availability benefits for applications. So what is a hypervisor? Why are there two types of hypervisors? What’s the difference between VMware® vSphere™ and Microsoft® Hyper-V®? What exactly are Type 1 and Type 2 hypervisors? What if I just want to learn about vSphere and Hyper-V so that I can compare…

Finding a remote desktop Android application suitable for your needs can be a real challenge. This guide will help you choose the best RDP app for Android for your company, looking at both paid and free options. In reviewing these remote desktop support apps, we have focused on apps with RDP Android to Windows capabilities,…

Imagine for a moment that you have suddenly been promoted from regular old developer to senior architect, and tasked with overseeing the telemetry efforts for all of the engineering teams at your organization. I recently had a conversation at DevOps Days Toronto with someone who was living through exactly that experience. He’d just been put in…

Docker Basics Using Docker containers is one of the most popular ways to build modern software these days. This is due to the way containers work—they’re really fast. Containers usually start in a few seconds and deploying newer versions of a container doesn’t take much longer. But if you’re looking for maximum performance, where every…

The IT infrastructure and applications in large enterprises require dedicated staff for their management, maintenance, and security. It’s a complex job, which can overwhelm any team with tickets and issues, and that’s why IT teams are always looking out for trustworthy ways to automate, centralize, and simplify their work. One of the typical ways to…

Comprehensive and efficient network monitoring is key to running a successful managed services provider (MSP) company. Effectively it can be the determining factor between keeping customers happy and productive at all times and finding out about performance issues too late. How can you make sure you’re choosing the best tools out there? Here’s what you…

The internet plays such a big part in our lives, but most people don’t think about the infrastructure supporting it—except, of course, when it fails. Now, taking a business owner’s point of view, you can own all the software and hardware you need to provide your service, but it also includes regular maintenance. For example,…

I think we’ve all had that moment at 3:00am on 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 when we tilt our head a bit looking at a monthly…

With more people using their personal devices for work purposes, properly implementing a BYOD policy with the right tools is more important than ever. Using private devices for work purposes has given employees more flexibility, increasing convenience and productivity, but there are several security risks associated with this trend. It’s now crucial for businesses to…

IT is really busy these days. In fact, IT’s been busy for as long as you can remember. Security issues today alone could keep you busy full-time, but there’s just not enough time in the day. Strategic initiatives and fires seem to take precedent daily, pushing some of the more necessary, but rudimentary, parts of…

Remote work is on the rise in today’s digital era. Even in cases where employees live and work within the same city, many opt for regular work from home hours. According to Gallup’s State of the American Workplace survey, 43% of employees worked remotely in some capacity in 2016, a 39% increase from 2012. On…

Imagine this: an employee at the satellite office across the country is having computer trouble, but they use an Apple device. Or maybe you have dozens of Mac end-user devices to reach, update, troubleshoot, or otherwise manage, but you don’t have time to find each device and manually address the issues. Since many IT professionals…

For administrators managing assets across enterprise networks, Active Directory is one of the most important tools in their toolbox. It doesn’t matter how large or small your operation is—managing assets, users, and authorizations across your network can be a headache. While Microsoft Active Directory (AD) is pretty indispensable when it comes to keeping tabs on…