Controlling Your Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure

Abstract The only constant in information technology is change. Technical pioneers continue to come up with new ways of doing things. The latest developments in IT infrastructure, as demonstrated in industry studies, include an increased adoption of hybrid cloud computing. With that trend comes a greater need to find ways to control a widely distributed […]

Increase Availability with Ticket Excellence

Everybody has troubles — especially IT professionals. But for obvious reasons, they don’t have the luxury to ignore them, run from them, put them off, or pass them on to somebody else. Doing so would undermine availability. Perhaps the availability of a server or a desktop, or even a workforce. No, in the world of […]

Data Center Power Reliability

In some respects, a load bank test of a data center is much like a road test of an automobile. Suppose you are in the market for a car, and you meet with a dealer or a private party to check out what they have to offer. You start it up, look under the hood, […]

Increase Uptime with the Right Code Deployment Strategy

Faster is not necessarily better. The push to launch new applications and services as quickly as possibly can cost you in the long run. A 2013 Gartner study predicted that ineffective software release management would cause 80% of production environment incidents in large organizations in the next few years. If keeping your network or applications […]

Major CenturyLink Network Outage to Close 2018

We end the year with a major CenturyLink outage that started early Thursday morning for many and spread across the country, according to reports on Reddit, GeekWire and Newsweek affecting Internet, 911 services and other internet-dependent services like waves and VoIP. The outage also affected other providers who lease long haul connectivity from them, such […]

Those Vulnerable 3rd-Party Web Services

Just when you think things are getting safer on the web, somebody comes up with a startling claim and spoils your party: “Our analysis paints a somewhat bleak situation on the state of modern web ecosystem.” That’s the conclusion of a 2016 study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University. The full title is worth noting: Oh, […]

Global Internet Tracking Sites

As much as we like data, it’s very easy to become lost in it. But what if you could see the whole picture? That’s the idea behind internet tracking dashboards. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some are used only to demonstrate the global reach of internet security services, while others can provide useful, […]

The Basics of DCIM

We have remarked several times in this space about the tremendous changes in the data center in such a short period of time. Not only are device footprints shrinking and functionalities converging, but the way that hardware and software are managed has become more comprehensive and streamlined. Now the same thing that has happening to […]

Market Surveys from Disaster Recovery Journal and Forrester

“I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.” Winston Churchill said a lot of things, but despite the rumors, fact checkers don’t believe he really originated this saying. It is actually a common joke in the German language that the Nazi propagandist Goebbels misattributed to the British leader. Another false quote did not really […]

Drilling for Disaster Recovery

On an Air Force base in San Antonio, Texas, two men walk into the base exchange. They show their IDs to the clerks, don Halloween masks, and proceed to play the part of terrorists. “This is a drill! We want liberation!  This is only a drill!” Airmen shopping in the facility give them funny looks, […]