Call me weird, but for whatever reason I find version control really interesting and a crucial part of your build and release model. Maybe it's because it's saved my bacon a few times so I appreciate what it does, or maybe it's because it lets me see how my code has...
One of the powerful features of a full enterprise product lifecycle management (PLM) system is being able to post process content uploaded to it. For example, adding a watermark, or changing a revision of a document automatically. The idea behind Solidworks Workgroup...
Every administrator runs into the FTP question eventually: Can we get FTP for our site? Setting up FTP is relatively easy with a few concerns around security. Old FTP sites were prone to security holes and configurations that were difficult. With vsftpd, the host...
In my last blog post, I gave 5 reasons to use ntop (Network TOP) to monitor your company's network. The tool is actually very straightforward to install and configure for infrastructure management, but there are a few steps you'll need to do before you're monitoring...
This seems to be the age of “Big Data”. Every sector seems to have a need for it -- from biotechs doing genome sequencing, to financial providers mining market data. For many, the ability to store massive amounts of structured or unstructured data is the key to...
For the everyday user with a laptop or desktop, this article may not apply. And for those of you who have no need to have more than one PC on your desk -- kudos! But from time to time, its necessary to have several PC's on your desk at the same time -- especially...
Have you ever sent out an email with a bunch of important questions and received a reply that began with "my answers are in blue". Have you then found yourself combing through your large email searching for those answers only to discover that your email provider...
With websites, it's important to have a consistent method to gate keep incoming connections. This is primarily to maintain security and ensure a common access point for all traffic. Web proxy servers allow channeling of traffic and proxy content from internal servers...
One of the most critical aspects of your network infrastructure is how well it's performing. The question that I often get asked as a provider of infrastructure services is, "Am I getting the most out of my local network and my internet bandwidth?" This is the one...
It's common knowledge that virtual infrastructure and virtual computing is becoming the standard rather than the exception. The pros of virtual computing far outweigh the cons, and as a result, more and more physical machines are being turned into virtual machines. In...
There are things in every system that if they fail will cause the entire system to be crippled. These single points of failure can be hardware based, software based or even people based. If a problem occurs in these sensitive areas then an entire business can grind to...
Most of the time that I'm asked to do a clone of a computer, it's usually restoring an image onto a brand new computer which saves me hours of setup work and configuration. In fact, my very first blog talked about how I deploy user workstations using Clonezilla. There...
