The marketing machines of today often paint new technologies to suggest they’re the best thing since sliced bread. Sometimes though, the new products are just a rehash of an existing technology. In this blog post, I’ll look at some of these. As some of you may know, my tech background is heavily focused around…
Hi! I’m Joe Reves, and I’m a Flow Nerd. I’m the Product Manager for our NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, and I’ve been working at SolarWinds for a little over a year. I’m excited about flow analytics and the problems we can solve by examining and visualizing network flow information. I’m awfully enthusiastic about all types of…
In my last post I gave some background on one of my recent side projects: setting up and then monitoring a Raspberry Pi running Pi-Hole. In this post, I’m going to dive into the details of how I set up the actual monitoring. As a reminder, you can download these Server & Application Monitor (SAM) templates from the THWACK…
This week's Actuator comes to you from my home office, where I’ll be located for the foreseeable future. We’ve successfully completed the first week of a three-week school closure. Last night we watched the documentary “Contagion,” so I fully expect this situation to last longer than just three weeks. As always, here's a…
I consider myself lucky that I have delivered many of our SolarWinds admin training courses and I would like to think that the people attending the course have also felt lucky to have spent a week, shut in a room with me, whilst I teach the finer art of managing an Orion installation. I like to get real world content into…
Is there a way to modernize and maintain compliance at the same time? Yes, absolutely. Many agencies have successfully overcome this challenge, particularly with Office 365, and are successfully modernizing their systems while meeting the required mandates. Monitoring and Backup Tips If you’re running Office 365, as many…
I hope this edition of the Actuator finds you and yours in good health and spirits today. The world has gone slightly cray-cray these past few weeks. It seems like yesterday I found myself elbow deep in fried pork products wondering if I would be able to fly home before the borders were closed. (Spoiler alert: I did).…
Automation is increasingly one of the cornerstones of an optimized federal IT environment. If you’re a federal IT pro, you may be asking, “Will automation make my job easier?” The answer is a resounding “yes,” as automation can dramatically enhance overall agency performance on multiple levels. Let’s start with automating…
After two weeks away at events it is good to be back home, safe and healthy. I hope the same is true for anyone reading this post. Here's hoping the second half of the year sees a return to normalcy, whatever that may mean for you. As always, here's a bunch of links I hope you will find useful. Enjoy! “Let’s use…
Today’s government IT professionals set rules to provide users with access rights, improving workflows while protecting agencies against threats. Unfortunately, the prevalence of mobile devices and cloud-based applications has made it increasingly difficult to establish those controls. This has led to security and…
It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.