Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

July 2020

SysAdmin Day 2020: Business as Usual During the "New Different"

I’m not going to even try to pretend SysAdmin Day arrives this year under conditions anyone would call “business as usual.” I’m going to avoid the cliched and empty platitudes of “the new normal,” “unprecedented times,” and “focusing on what matters.” I’m also going to avoid needlessly reminding you how much your company, coworkers, family, and friends rely on you because of your technical knowledge and expertise.

How Digital Transformation Has Evolved Through COVID-19

There’s no debating the value of digital transformation when it comes to optimal business performance, but for many IT leaders, some digital initiatives are pushed to the backburner due to other priorities. Over the last few months, COVID-19 has forced a number of those initiatives to the top of the list. From businesses transitioning to remote work, to schools closing, to travel plans being canceled, no one was fully prepared for what the world would face this year.

Why Monitoring Can Be the Lifesaver the Public Sector Needs

One of the business consequences from the pandemic—increased remote working—is causing technology challenges across most industries, including the public sector. Most employees who are now working from home have probably never had to do so before, while those still attending their place of work are mostly people in central government trying to keep the country running, or other critical roles.

3 Foundational Elements of Zero Trust You Can't Do Without

While the concept of zero-trust security has many IT organizations thinking in terms of identity, access, and cloud services, zero trust must run on a solid foundation. We should start by talking about the goals of zero-trust security. Zero trust involves creating an environment where each access request is first scrutinized to determine whether it should be allowed.

Using Non-Enterprise Gear in an Enterprise World

Different IT organizations have different needs. The one-man shop might find the best success with open-source software, while enterprises often need something a little more. But occasionally you’ll see an enterprise using open-source or something designed for a small to medium-sized business. This can be a good thing in certain instances, though it’s not without risks. So, why might you want to use SMB or open-source gear in an enterprise setting, and when might it be a good thing?

New support for HTTP connections

As all Papertrail fans know, sending logs to Papertrail using syslog is quick and easy. Generating and transmitting syslog packets usually involves just 2 – 4 lines of code, and you can see your logs flowing into Papertrail in minutes. There are times, however, when you just can’t use syslog or install a remote_syslog2 daemon. This is where the new support for sending logs via HTTP comes in. And the best news is, it’s just as quick and easy to set up.

Is Your Service Desk Too Complicated to Use?

It’s an exchange that happens almost every day in every business office: Employee peeks over the divider and asks her coworker, “Hey, how do I connect this to Bluetooth?” Maybe it’s a frozen laptop, or a glitch in the browser, or an issue connecting to VPN. And maybe it’s a drive-by at the coffee machine or Slack message to a “tech-savvy” coworker.

Monitor Azure Functions With the Simplicity of AppOptics

Managing servers isn’t always the most effective way to run an application. With serverless computing, teams can deploy applications directly to managed hardware, scale them on demand, and avoid the overhead of provisioning and maintaining their own infrastructure. As many as 40% of companies surveyed by DevOps.com use serverless computing. And serverless platforms like Azure Functions make deploying serverless questions quick and easy.

3 Ways to Maintain Your Agency's Focus on IT Modernization

Congress set the stage for IT modernization across the federal government by passing the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act, allowing agencies to apply for a loan from the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) to update their legacy systems. The theory states, with access to TMF funds, agencies can now improve innovation, enhance efficiencies, and strengthen their security postures.

A Successful ITSM Implementation Starts With 4 Checkboxes

You’ve been contemplating adopting a new ITSM solution for some time. The current one handles the bare minimum—it helps your team churn through a ticket queue—but you know there are other solutions capable of more. So what’s standing in your way? Implementing that new platform seems time-consuming and stressful. But it doesn’t have to be.

2020.2 Releases: Orion Map Updates, New Security Product Features, and More - SolarWinds Lab #89

SolarWinds 2020.2 product releases contain upgrades, improvements, and new features across the entire stack. Solutions for IT operations management, software-defined infrastructure, and hybrid IT monitoring all have been updated. In this episode of SolarWinds Lab, Head Geek Patrick Hubbard and a team of product experts will walk you through some of the highlights of these latest releases. They'll focus specifically on the Orion Platform products, as well as security and database tools.

Building Automation Rules in SolarWinds Service Desk

Automation continues to be a major trend in IT. Whether it's a small rule to send all hardware issues to a specific queue or a large rule which routes through several stages, automating as much as possible reduces the chance of human error. Watch this video to learn how to create simple automation rules in your SolarWinds Service Desk solution.

Supporting a Mobile Workforce Across the Public Sector

Over five million people work in the U.K. public sector, representing over 16% of all people in paid work, according to government figures. And mobile working is a reality of daily life for many of us. A report from Deloitte revealed of the 32.3 million people in work in the U.K., the majority (51%) spend some time away from a fixed location in the course of their work.

SQL Server Performance Tuning Best Practices Using DPA Tool

Query tuning is generally considered one of the fastest ways to accelerate your Microsoft SQL Server performance. System-level server performance improvement activities can be expensive and ineffective. Moreover, expert developers agree most SQL Server performance issues can be traced directly to poorly written queries and ineffective indexing rather than hardware constraints. In fact, many performance problems can only be resolved through query optimization and tuning.

Distributed Computing - When Everyone Is Working From Home

We’ve officially made it past day 100 in quarantine. I hope you’ve found your groove, perfected your at-home office/workspace, learned a new language, tested six new bread recipes, and launched a successful TikTok channel. I also hope your pants still fit and you remember how to put them on correctly. Working from home has been an interesting situation to say the least, and has come with a whirlwind of emotions and business updates, two things I never expected to type in the same sentence.

4 Ways to Improve Your Change Management Practices

Okay, good. You have a change management practice in place. You know how to define it, its benefits, how to get the process started, and how to measure its success. You also know it makes for greater success for business initiatives, it prepares the organization for the future, and drives consistency. But how can your current change management practice be improved upon? No matter if you’re a change requestor or change manager, the improvement of your current practice depends on these four actions.

Understand Complex Environments Without Being an Expert Using AppOptics for APM

Over the past two decades, two trends have completely reshaped the IT landscape: cloud computing and microservices. With cloud computing, organizations of all sizes can provision infrastructure and run applications on a global scale within minutes. And with microservices, these organizations can deploy highly scalable distributed workloads just as quickly.

I Can Do That, Dave: Exploring AIOps

The movies are filthy with examples of artificial intelligence. Some, like the first Terminator, are evil. Some, like the Star Wars droids, work for the good guys. And so many of them are flatly iconic—Blade Runner (both of them), 2001: A Space Odyssey, War Games, Westworld (the movie and the HBO series), Matrix[i] … the list keeps going and going. We aren’t at the point yet when we can get R2 to talk the Millennium Falcon—or the data center—and find out what’s wrong.

SolarWinds Gives IT Pros New Levels of Hybrid IT Support With Enhanced IT Operations Management Portfolio

Introduces new and improved software-defined solutions support, AWS and Azure workload troubleshooting and visibility, and full-stack application and infrastructure monitoring capabilities

Monitor, Troubleshoot, and Optimize Your Virtual Environment With SolarWinds Virtualization Manager

SolarWinds® Virtualization Manager (VMAN) is a vendor-agnostic monitoring tool designed to provide alerting and performance recommendations for VMware vSphere®, Microsoft Hyper-V®, Nutanix® AHV, and both Azure® and AWS® IaaS environments. See how Virtualization Manager can help you optimize and tune your virtual environment.

Suggested Cloud Monitoring Strategies for IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS

From the Cloud First policy established in 2010 to last year’s Cloud Smart update, it’s clear the government is driving federal agencies toward cloud computing. The strategy makes sense, but for agencies migrating, however, the decision is less clear cut, because there are several options agencies can choose based on individual agency needs.

Becoming Hybrid: Operating Your Cloud Environment

It’s a day for celebration! Our migration is complete, and our applications are now running in the cloud environment best suited to their needs. The rest of our application inventory, the ones not cut out for the cloud, remain on-premises where they belong. Actually…we’re not done yet. We still have some work to do to make sure our hybrid environment runs smoothly and delivers the business value we expect. Fortunately, we aren’t the first ones to travel this path.

Surviving IT in Snap Downturns

The global effect of and challenges to business in 2020 is the very definition of “unprecedented.” While large enterprises enjoy the advantage of scale to redistribute focus and sustain demand for their goods and services, small- to medium-sized businesses may not be as lucky. For example, your favorite restaurants and retail shops, both local and national chains, have been hit in previously inconceivable ways, and are doing everything in their power to survive.

Change Templates: Your Roadmap for Necessary IT Changes

For some, change is something to look forward to. For others, it may be scary and anxiety-inducing. If the latter describes your organization, it may be time to rethink your change management practice. Changes are necessary in ITSM. Whether standard or an emergency, if IT changes are not successful, the business could suffer in the long run. Performing changes allows IT pros and business leaders to be proactive when risks arise to minimize disruption and keep employees engaged in the work that counts.