Realtime Nexus: IT eBook alerts

The Executive Guide to Service Management in an Uncertain Economy

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:25:50 -0500

New eBook: Service Management in an Uncertain Economy
by Jeffery Hicks

In an uncertain economy, IT departments can count on two very certain demands: increase productivity and cut costs. When it comes to service management, CFOs, CIOs, and IT managers face the difficult challenge of developing a strategy that is tightly aligned with business goals yet still delivers its services in the most cost-efficient manner possible. In The Executive Guide to Service Management in an Uncertain Economy, author Jeffery Hicks delivers an approach to service management that will show you how to meet the many business requirements of the IT department, such as reduced staff and lower budgets, all while still meeting the IT demands from customers, partners, and compliance organizations. You will learn how to develop an efficient service management strategy focused on effective asset management, data center automation, and management consolidation. You will also receive an action plan for each focus area, providing a checklist of must-do's to execute on your service management strategy. Chapters in this new eBook include: Chapter 1: Creating a Well Managed Service Management Strategy Chapter 2: Creating a Well Managed Data Center Chapter 3: Effective Management Consolidation Chapter 4: Effective Asset Management

The Shortcut Guide to Data Center Energy Efficiency

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:48:36 -0500

Complete eBook: Data Center Energy Efficiency
by David Chernicoff

Virtualization and commitments to green IT initiatives are changing the way that data centers operate. By utilizing new technologies, repurposing existing equipment, and matching power and cooling supply to actual data center demand, IT will receive maximum benefit in the form of greater data center energy efficiency and decreased power and cooling costs. The Shortcut Guide to Data Center Energy Efficiency offers insight on building a data center infrastructure that matches data center power and cooling demands in a way that optimizes operational efficiency while meeting the IT business and computing needs. This eBook will show you methods for minimizing the cost of your operating data center, and lays out a set of specific best practices and considerations for upgrading a production data center.

Tech Tips: Reducing Data Center Costs

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:09:56 -0500

Make Your User Profiles Portable
by Greg Shields

Let's face facts: Microsoft's implementation of user profiles can be exceptionally painful. As long as those profiles and their user stay on the same computer, they're relatively easy to work with. But when either users or profiles need to move, their management quickly grows complex. The problem lies endemic to the profiles themselves. Microsoft and installed applications generally store their user-specific settings into subfolders of the location C:\Users. As a result, one would think it would be trivial to just copy this location from one computer to another to have the profile follow the user wherever they go. But, as we all know, this ostensibly simple process just doesn't work. At the same time, roaming profiles (which essentially follow this architecture) are painful, confusing to users, and difficult to administer.

Tech Tips: Reducing Data Center Costs

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:07:58 -0500

Software Inventory and Metering
by Greg Shields

How many times have you found yourself walking the halls of your business, clipboard in hand, looking for various instances of licenses and OS installations? These days, that clipboard with its paper and pencil is such an ancient activity that the process itself is a cost for your business. Eliminate the manual process by implementing software to do inventory for you. Did you know that Microsoft Windows includes a list of every installed application in the registry location HKEY_LOCAL_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Uninstall? Registering software to this registry location has become so commonplace that most commercial inventory products simply look here to generate their list of installed software.

Tech Tips: Reducing Data Center Costs

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:04:47 -0500

Reduce Power Consumption with Group Policy
by Greg Shields

Times are hard. Cable news now refers to today's college graduates as the "lost generation," with nearly half having troubles finding work. Businesses everywhere see escalating costs due to inflation and health care, all the while business itself is slowing down for many industries. What can an IT professional do? With little to no access to budget, and even less opportunity for business-altering changes, how can the IT department assist the business with its money problems? One area that always helps is in cost savings. Although every IT organization strives to one day be a profit center, most businesses still today see IT as a necessary cost to get the job done. Thus, your best chance to help your business is to find ways to optimize, automate, and reduce the total cost of IT ownership.

The Definitive Guide to Application Performance Management

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:12:53 -0500

Chapter 6: APM's Service-Centric Monitoring Approach
by Greg Shields

This guide has spent a lot of time talking about monitoring and monitoring integrations. It discussed the history of monitoring. It explained where and how monitoring can be integrated into your existing environment. It outlined in great detail how end user experience (EUE) monitoring layers over the top of traditional monitoring approaches. Yet in all these discussions, there has been little talk so far about how that monitoring is actually manifested into an APM solution’s end result. In this chapter, you will learn about the process of fitting together holistic sets of data captured from the IT infrastructure in order to derive meaningful, actionable information. You will discover that the real magic in an APM solution comes through the creation and use of its Service Model.

Tech Tips: Data Warehousing

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:51:58 -0500

How and Why Is Microsoft Excel Used in Data Warehousing?
by Don Jones

One of the tricks with data warehousing is to get all your data into the warehouse; the other trick is to actually examine it—meaning you need a way to ask questions and get answers from the data in the warehouse. Excel's PivotTable feature provides a fairly straightforward way of asking those questions, and it does so in an environment that's friendly and familiar to many data warehouse users—especially users who are already accustomed to using Excel for financial analysis and "what if" scenarios. Other spreadsheets provide pivot table functionality, too, including OpenOffice.org's Calc.

Tech Tips: Data Warehousing

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:50:58 -0500

Why Is OLAP Faster Than OLTP?
by Don Jones

To be clear, Online Analytical Processing (OLAP), the basis for data warehousing, is not universally faster that Online Transaction Processing (OLTP), the basis for most databases that support real-time applications. OLAP is simply faster for certain types of reporting. Typically, an OLAP database is populated by copying data from an OLTP database and expanding or transforming that data into a different structure. Let's take an example.

Tech Tips: Data Warehousing

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:46:38 -0500

What Are Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, and Analysis?
by Don Jones

Lots of big words! Actually, in the past 4 or 5 years, so many related terms have been thrown together that it's tough to sort them out. Microsoft started offering "data warehousing" for SQL Server back in v7, but then switched to "BI features" (BI is insider-speak for business intelligence) and now offers SQL Server Analysis Services. So what's what? Properly defined, BI is a set of skills, technologies, and practices that a business uses to gain better understanding of itself and to make better decisions about its future. Data warehousing and analysis are components of business intelligence, but so are more mundane practices such as budgeting and planning. The real goal of BI is to provide methods to analyze historical data in a variety of new ways, allow business leaders to propose scenarios, and then predict how those scenarios will change the data trends in the future. This process helps business leaders make more informed guesses about how specific decisions will play out in the future and to select decisions that will have the best positive impact.

The Definitive Guide to Windows Application and Server Backup 2.0

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:28:41 -0500

Chapter 4: Rethinking Exchange Server Backups
by Don Jones

Ask anyone in the organization what their most mission critical piece of infrastructure is, and you'll probably hear "email" as a common answer. Or you might not: Many folks take email for granted, although they expect it to be as available and reliable as a telephone dial tone. Users who have never suffered an email outage almost can't imagine doing so; once they do experience an outage, they make sure everyone knows how much they're suffering. As one of the most popular solutions for corporate email, Exchange Server occupies a special place in your infrastructure. It's expected to be "always on," always available, and always reliable. Disasters simply can't be tolerated. What's more, users' own mistakes and negligence become very much your problem, meaning you have to offer recovery services that are quick and effective, even when you're recovering something that a user mistakenly deleted on their own. In this chapter, you will learn about Exchange Server's native backup and restore capabilities as well as the challenges that they present. By examining the old-style Backup 1.0 solutions for Exchange recovery, you will understand what works and what doesn't in these traditional solutions. This chapter goes on to detail how Backup 2.0 will improve restore scenarios and disaster recovery for Exchange Server, and closes with a list of some Exchange-specific concerns such as de-duplication, data corruption, and search and e-Discovery.

The Essentials Series: Fundamentals of Effective File Server Security

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:13:17 -0500

Complete Series: Fundamentals of Effective File Server Security
by Greg Shields

File servers maintain an increasing volume of business critical information. Maintaining the integrity and availability of these resources is a challenge that information technology professionals must rise to meet. The Essentials Series: Fundamentals of Effective File Server Security provides an introduction to the tooling in Windows Server 2008 that can be used to secure a file server, report on the security measures in place, and put in place audit controls to meet regulatory requirements and confirm internal compliance. Articles in this series include: Article 1: Enforcing File and Folder Security Article 2: Enumerating File and Folder Security Article 3: Auditing File and Folder Access

The Essentials Series: Important Questions in Implementing Virtual Desktops

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:47:59 -0500

Complete Series: Important Questions in Implementing Virtual Desktops
by Greg Shields

For organizations that have embraced virtualization, virtual desktops can be a natural extension of the virtual infrastructure. Virtual desktops enable businesses to centralize their desktop infrastructure in the data center, dramatically improving remote access while retaining workspace personality. Although the idea of virtual desktops and their associated business value is intriguing to many businesses, the implementation is a mystery. Where do you start? What technologies are crucial for success? How are others implementing them? By addressing these common questions, The Essentials Series: Important Questions in Implementing Virtual Desktops will help you understand why and where virtual desktops make sense for your IT environment. Articles in this series include: Article 1: Where Do I Start with Virtual Desktops? Article 2: What Technologies Are Critical for Virtual Desktop Success? Article 3: What Are Others Doing with Virtual Desktops?

Tech Tips: Backup and Recovery

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:39:26 -0500

Solidifying Your Backup and Recovery Strategy for SQL Server
by Richard Siddaway

One of the primary responsibilities of a DBA is to ensure the safety of the data held in the databases they are responsible for administering. This is often expressed in terms of having a sound, and tested, backup policy. In reality, a sound restore policy is required, with the backup policy defining how you generate the source data for the restore process. This article will discuss the restore and backup issues surrounding SQL Server and show some of the new backup-related features in SQL Server 2008. We will concentrate on backup as it relates to functionality within SQL Server 2008. Previous versions may provide the same, or similar, functionality that is implemented in a different manner and requires a different backup technique. The discussion in this article will concentrate on using the native SQL Server backup and restore tools. Third-party backup tools can be used to produce similar results.

Tech Tips: Backup and Recovery

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:38:21 -0500

Common Ways to Tell You Are Not Prepared to Recover from a Disaster
by Eric Beehler

Disaster recovery is somewhat of a buzzword in the IT industry, and IT professionals have all been exposed to their share of great disaster recovery ideas from business managers. These ideas are often based on the industry buzz and seem to only make more work for you with little gain overall. This is usually because the idea is not backed up with a real plan. The actual implementation of disaster recovery is usually a big chore to undertake correctly, but in the end, it is well worth the trouble.

Tech Tips: Backup and Recovery

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:29:25 -0500

Designing for Disaster Recovery with Exchange
by J. Peter Bruzzese

With all the buzz around high-availability for Exchange 2007, some have wondered whether a discussion of disaster recovery is even necessary and if backups are obsolete - ancient history for Exchange. It is true that you can utilize the high-availability options in Exchange 2007, such as Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR), combined with Standby Continuous Replication (SCR) to provide such a solid high-availability solution that you could almost say you are ready for a disaster.

The Shortcut Guide to Data Center Energy Efficiency

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:02:35 -0500

Chapter 4: Strategies for Upgrading a Production Data Center
by David Chernicoff

With an existing data center, there is ongoing pressure to maintain an environment that is cost effective and productive. As technologies evolve and external factors affect the costs of doing business, IT executives have to stay on top of the technologies that can make their existing facilities as efficient as possible. Understanding these technologies and how they can impact the efficiencies of your data center provides a firm foundation for making choices about the future of your data center infrastructure. Upgrading an existing data center means making the right choices to make your data center more energy efficient. As we have covered in earlier chapters, there are both technological and organizational efforts that can be applied to achieve this end. The tasks involved in upgrading your data center fall into two general categories; those involved with the actual physical environment, such as layout, power, and cooling, and those that focus on the overall process, such as meeting best practice standards and management. This chapter will focus on both of these categories and their underlying tasks.

The Definitive Guide to Building Code Quality

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:44:30 -0500

Complete eBook: Building Code Quality
by Don Jones

The Definitive Guide to Building Code Quality presents a comprehensive review of modern techniques used to transform raw source code into finished product. In addition to exploring current tools and methods, the guide reviews common techniques and best practices for debugging, testing, and preparing code for commercial release. Throughout, the emphasis is on completeness of coverage in test cases, complete exercise and optimization of code, and use of appropriate procedures and workflows to ensure that changes to code bases are properly recognized, tested, and integrated. The primary development environment targeted in this book is Visual Studio 2008, but even those who use other development environments and toolsets will find the exploration of code analysis and metrics, taxonomies and illustrations of common coding errors, and automated code optimization techniques to be of great interest. The discussion includes methods to reduce code complexity, make most effective use of resources, analyze code path length, and determine optimal use of code libraries, and predefined objects and methods.

The Essentials Series: Managed Application Failover for the SMB

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:59:45 -0500

Complete Series: Managed Application Failover for the SMB
by David Chernicoff

Application failover provides a critical part of the process for keeping your business running in the face of a technical disaster. The complexity of the process keeps many smaller SMB customers from implementing the necessary hardware and software to take this critical step in becoming a more effective business entity. In The Essentials Series: Managed Application Failover for the SMB, we will explain the concepts underlying the managed services approach to business continuity issues and provide the reader with the key concepts and critical decision points that need to be hit when choosing to use managed services and selecting a provider. Articles Include: Article 3: Implementing Business Continuity Services for the SMB Article 2: Understanding the Business Benefits of Managed Services Article1: Understanding Managed Services

The Shortcut Guide to Centralized SharePoint Administration

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:57:21 -0500

Chapter 2: Understanding SharePoint Administration Hierarchy
by Wendy Henry

This chapter will examine the different responsibilities and possible configuration settings that can be managed at each tier of Microsoft's SharePoint Administration Model. Starting at the top, we will first examine global settings that affect Web applications (and thus the site collections within them). We'll then explore the MOSS Shared Service Provider management at tier two. Lastly, this chapter will divide the bottom administration tier into site collection versus individual site management. There is much to discuss, so let's get started!

The Shortcut Guide to Subject Alternative Name Certificates

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:06:07 -0500

Complete eBook: Subject Alternative Name Certificates
by Mike Danseglio

Most organizations use certificates in some fashion. Web servers, email servers, messaging servers... everything seems to be moving in the direction of public key certificates. But certificates can be costly and confusing to manage, especially with large web farms or email-centric companies. One great solution to this problem is the use of subject alternative name (SAN) certificates. The Shortcut Guide to Subject Alternative Name Certificates provides information about SAN certificates to show how they can be used in a variety of technologies. These special certificates allow multiple hosts to use the same certificate, avoiding the costs of obtaining, deploying, and managing multiple nearly-identical certificates. This guide will explore what SAN certificates are, how they work, and how they can help you deploy server farms more efficiently. You may even discover that you already have SAN certificates available that can be put to good use with no additional expense!

The Executive Guide to Improving Your Business through IT Portfolio Management

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:15:20 -0500

Chapter 3: Prioritizing Projects and Investment Decision Making
by Jim Varner

If you are going to elevate the IT organization to the level of a business partner, you must transform IT data into investment data. By identifying where the strategic and operational demands lie, you can focus IT on the projects that align to corporate goals. CIOs must be able to shift resources from operations to strategic investing in order to be a business partner instead of a technical advisor. This balancing act is an excellent first step; however CIOs must use the role of a business advisor to ensure that your organization's technology investments yield the highest possible returns. In Chapter 3, you will learn how IT portfolio management will help you accurately gauge the success rate of technology implementations, as well as monitor technology in order to set expectations for all technology stakeholders. You will gain an understanding of how ITPM can assist in measuring the true need for certain IT capabilities in order to prioritize technology investments. Lastly, you will learn a set of steps for communicating the value of IT to all colleagues involved in the budgeting and resource allocation processes, from capturing and consolidating IT demand, to final approval and implementation

The Definitive Guide to Application Performance Management

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:51:29 -0500

Chapter 5: Understanding the End User's Perspective
by Greg Shields

Chapter 3 of this guide walked you through the entire history of IT monitoring as we know it. Starting with the basics of "ping" responses, through SNMP polls, agent and agentless perspectives, and concluding with application analytics and transaction gathering, the history of monitoring has evolved dramatically over time. With each evolution, the areas in which monitoring integrates with your systems grow richer while their data grows more useful to the business. As continued in Chapter 4, each successive approach adds yet another layer to the overall view into a computing environment. Yet Chapter 3 and 4's discussion concluded at the very point where experience-based monitoring actually starts to get interesting. With the development of End User Experience Monitoring (EUE), automated solutions for watching your business systems get their first looks into the actual behaviors experienced by an application's users. Gathering metrics from the perspective of the user themselves brings a level of objective analysis to what has traditionally been a subjective problem. If you’ve ever dealt with the dreaded "the servers are slow today" phone call, you understand this problem. Chapter 5 offers a discussion of End User Experience Monitoring and the most valuable perspectives to consider when targeting your EUE monitoring. This is followed by an examination of helpful performance measurements relating to the amount of time required to complete a transaction between two elements. Finally, Chapter 5 discusses ways to leverage EUE in order to improve application quality.

Tech Tips: Group Policy

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:42:06 -0500

Using Group Policy Preferences to Control Software Settings
by Greg Shields

Group Policy Preferences' (GPPs') abilities to eliminate your login scripts and bring customizable control to your user's workspace make it an exceptionally useful tool. Its no-added-cost price point accentuates that usefulness, most especially in today's "use what you already have" economy. Yet it can be argued that GPP's greatest power has yet to be discussed. That power comes in complete control over the applications that make up your environment.

Tech Tips: Group Policy

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:40:20 -0500

Creating, Targeting, and Applying Group Policy Preferences
by Greg Shields

Creating a new Group Policy Preference (GPP) begins in much the same way as creating a new Group Policy. Start the process by launching the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) on a Windows Vista (or greater) or a Windows Server 2008 (or greater) computer. This may require the installation of the Remote Server Administration Tools, which can be downloaded from Microsoft's Web site. While the settings GPPs can be used by down-level clients as far as Windows XP, the actual creation of the GPP must be done using the GPMC on one of these operating systems (OSs).

Tech Tips: Group Policy

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:25:44 -0500

What Are the Differences Between Group Policy and Group Policy Preferences?
by Greg Shields

Imagine a world where every facet of your desktop environment is controlled, locked down, or otherwise centrally managed. In such a world, your corporate policies and indeed your every whim are explicitly defined for your users. You, the administrator, wield complete power in ensuring the safety, security, and functionality of your computing environment. Such a situation would be an IT administrator's nirvana: Tired of poorly-written screen savers that consume resources and crash machines? Lock them out! Long for drive mappings that follow users wherever they go without the inconsistencies of login scripts? Enforce them! Yearn for a way to control the settings of applications (even third-party and custom applications!) to protect your users and ease your job? Cram them down, policy-style! With such complete power, you the all-powerful administrator could prevent problems from ever happening, ensure the highest reliability for your computing infrastructure, and in the end score that huge raise at your next annual review. Does this sound like imagination? It's not. Such complete control over your desktop environment is achievable today. Best of all, its achievable using technologies you already have in place. What is this all-powerful technology? It's the same Group Policy that's been available since February 17th of the year 2000, now augmented with extra capabilities in Windows Server 2008. If you haven't played with Microsoft's not-entirely-new Group Policy Preferences, read on.