Updated Solutions to Classic Challenges
A personal website dedicated to helping IT professionals review where we've been, where we are, and maybe where we are headed.
Intel’s launch event held on April 2, 2019 served as a forum to announce new products designed to tackle three distinct areas in Enterprise IT. - compute, persistent storage, and networking. Combined, the products should lead to new servers optimized for better cloud computing platforms.
Read MoreMicrosoft released a new version of it’s Edge web browser based on the chromium engine. This is the same engine that powers Google’s chrome browser. While it seems strange at first for Microsoft to use tech that’s from an outside source, it’s another indication that this is a new Microsoft willing to make radical changes if needed to stay competitive. This decision turns out to be advantageous to Enterprise customers.
Read MoreI was honored to sit down with Kieth Townsend during AWS re:Invent to discuss various managed kubernetes offerings as a guest on the CTO Dose.
Read MoreCloud Field Day 5 had an awesome lineup of companies presenting the latest in tech. Among them was NGINX. Most people know NGINX as a webserver-slash-load balancer that all the cool kids are using these days. By all the cool kids, I mean the reported >40% of webservers on the public Internet. But NGINX was also in the news recently because it was acquired by F5. This acquisition has caused many to question what would happen next. F5 has a long history as a traditional enterprise appliance vendor. That dominance could come into question in a cloud-first world. How F5 would change NGINX was very much top of mind as I watched their presentation to the Field Day delegates.
Read MoreOn March 20, 2019, Microsoft announced via a blog post changes to the path for earning the Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate certification. The path has been simplified in that it now requires a single exam, AZ-103 in order to achieve the credential. Those who complete exam AZ-100 before May 1, 2019 will also be certified. Previously, candidates had to complete exams AZ-100 and AZ-101 to become certified.
Read MoreOn Tuesday April 2, Intel will host an event called the Data-Centric Innovation Day. Not much is known about the content of the event. There’s been some speculation as to what will be announced, however, Intel could go in lots of different directions due to the breadth of their product portfolio.
Read MoreI’m still getting used to this whole podcast thing, but I appeared on one recently. I had the immense honor of sharing a panel with some fellow Tech Field Day delegates as we discussed the future of Microsoft Windows.
I’ve embedded the video below. I’ve also included a link to the audio.
I recommend going to the Gestalt IT On-Premise website to check out so many more awesome conversations https://gestaltit.com/category/podcast/
Amazon has made available a new set of graphics in Visio, and other formats. These stencils are an excellent resource for architects and engineers who need to document cloud environments.
The symbols can be found here: https://aws.amazon.com/architecture/icons/
All the major file formats are available including: EPS, PNG, SVG, Visio, and PowerPoint. Interestingly, there are two sets of PowerPoint shapes. One supports light backgrounds. The other supports dark backgrounds. I’ve included an example of what each looks like for comparison.
Read MoreI ran into a strange error today. I attempted to launch SQL Server Configuration Manger on a server deployed in Azure, and I was greeted with an error dialog that implied either the server was unreachable or that I didn’t have rights. The error read, “Cannot connect to WMI provider. You Do not have permission or the server is unreachable. Note that you can only manage SQL Server 2055 and later servers with SQL Server Configuration Manager. Invalid namespace [0x8004100e].” After a bit of digging, I found a solution, and possibly even a root cause.
Read MoreNetApp presented their latest in proactive maintenance technology, ActiveIQ at Tech Field Day 18 in Austin, TX. ActiveIQ is a blend of software and service that allows NetApp to review configurations and propose suggestions based on their extensive body of knowledge. To power the product, NetApp collects more than 10 trillion data points per month of information from customer’s systems, stores it in a massive data lake, and exposes that data to other systems within NetApp to look for trends. The tech vendor also uses a machine learning algorithm to mine customer data for issues and optimal configurations. It’s really quite promising stuff.
Read MoreSolarWinds made their desire to be considered a serious player in the security space known during their most recent Tech Field Day presentation. Gartner predicted computer security spending to be over $118 B in 2018, so jumping into this market makes sense. Security isn’t typically associated with SolarWinds. There will be some effort to get the word out. Working in SolarWinds’ favor is the fact that the products look pretty good.
Read MoreLast week I had the honor to server as a Tech Field Day delegate and hear a presentation by SolarWinds. SolarWinds is primarily known as a Network Monitoring and Management company. Over the years, they’ve built a large community of IT Pros who use their software. I first learned about them through the tools SolarWinds provides for free, such as the TFTP server app. Back when I was in charge of managing network equipment like routers and switches, the TFTP server was a lifesaver for updating switch firmware. Later, I would use their Network Performance Monitor (NPM) tool to track the performance of the overall network. I was curious to see where SolarWinds was at this point in time as well as to get a glimpse of where they might be headed.
Read MoreOne week from now I’ll be in Austin as part of the Tech Field Day delegate crew for Tech Field Day 18. This is my second Field Day event having attended Cloud Field Day 4 in Silicon Valley last year. I remember being completely terrified going into the trip. I had no idea what to expect. Sure, I’d watched presentations over the internet for years, but I hadn’t considered what happened once the cameras stopped rolling. It’s also fair to say I suffered from a fair bit of impostor syndrome. I didn’t feel my voice was as strong as the other delegates’. I couldn’t have imaged the sense of camaraderie, conversations, and history gained from attending.. Long story short, it turned out to be one of the most fun work-ish experiences I’ve had in my adult life.
Read MoreMany government websites have been taken offline as the US Government shutdown continues. The site that may affect IT Pros and developers the most is Data.gov. Acting as the US Government’s main data portal, it’s used by many different visitors for multiple reasons. Everything from agricultural data to crime statistics can be found there. Visiting Data.gov brings up a message saying they are offline “until further notice.” Anyone who relies on this site is potentially left without options.
Read MoreI recently read through Nick Triantafillou’s excellent review of AWS re:Invent 2018 SWAG and feel there needs to be a bit of a level set for people who didn’t attend. This is especially true if you are considering attending next year, and you expect to take home a massive haul of free stuff. Not everyone who attends walks away with all of the items. Know that the best way to get swag at re:Invent is to have a plan.
Read MoreKnowing I’d have a bit of a vacation this winter, I wanted to get in a bit of reading. I decided to pick my books differently this year. Instead of just seeing whatever was at the top of the NYT list, or some cool looking sci-fi, I decided to let the Silicon Valley folks pick out my books. The list is a mixture of texts found on the lists of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and others from a Business Insider article that gathered recommendations from many in the tech industry.
Read MoreHow to connect to an Azure SQL DB is a question that comes up for a lot of admins used to administering on-premises SQL Server. Connecting to the cloud managed version of SQL Server is very similar to the local datacenter version and uses the same tools. Both SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and SQL Server Data Studio can be used to connect to Azure SQL Database.
Read MoreI’ve created a new GitHub repository to track various Azure DB projects I’m working on in my spare time. Azure DB’s fully managed nature makes it somewhat different than traditional Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) installs. There are some features (like ETL) which are not available to end users which means customers may need to reconsider some architectural decisions. My plan is to work on the basics in addition to more advanced topics related to the architectural changes. Like any side project, I can’t quite commit to timelines, but as long as I keep coming up with questions I’d like to answer, I’ll keep adding. The first project is to build a SQL DB via code. The beauty of doing this in the public via GitHub is that anyone can fork the code, or contribute.
Read MoreMicrosoft Azure provides the capability to use command line tools such as PowerShell without having it installed on your computer. This is accomplished via Azure Cloud Shell. Azure Cloud Shell can help you get working in Azure quickly on different platforms, or even from a loaner machine. There are many situations where you might not have your normally loaded computer, but you still need to work in Azure. Azure Cloud Shell can be quite handy.
Read MoreI thought I knew ahead of time what some of the stories coming out of re:invent would be. I expected some new instance types, some price changes, and maybe some announcements around serverless compute workloads. That plan changed when Amazon’s Andy Jassay spoke out against Oracle and SQL Server during his AWS re:invent keynote. His statements made me take another look at the updates to Amazon’s database that allowed him to speak in such a manner.
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