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Dropped Packets with Stephen Foskett — SolarWinds TechPod 003
Listen in on a candid conversation with Stephen Foskett, a fixture in the world of enterprise information technology, longtime voice in the storage industry, and organizer-in-chief of Gestalt IT’s Tech Field Day. Stephen divulges some of his best tech-related travel tips, secret passions, and what the future has in store…
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Automation, End Users, and Industry Trends — SolarWinds TechPod 002
This episode of SolarWinds TechPod features Stephen Foskett, discussing his takeaways from Gestalt IT’s Tech Field Day Austin event, including behind-the-scenes insight into what it takes to be selected as a Tech Field Day delegate. He also discusses themes that have emerged from Tech Field Day events and how end users are…
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A Sysadmin's Guide to Spaghetti Cabling: Bridging the Gap between IT Operations and Business
No, it’s not the latest culinary invention from a famous Italian chef: spaghetti cabling (a nice wording for cabling inferno) is a sour dish we’d rather not eat. Beyond this unsavory term hides the complexity of many environments that have grown organically, where “quick fixes” have crystallized into permanent solutions,…
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The Pros and Cons of Open-source Tools
Cost plays a factor in most IT decisions. Whether the costs are hardware- or software-related, understanding how the tool’s cost will affect the bottom line is important. Typically, it’s the engineer’s or administrator’s task to research tools and/or hardware to fit the organization's needs both fiscally and…
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Will I Save Money by Moving to the Cloud?
This post is post one in a small series, taking an atypical look at the public cloud and why you may or may not want to leverage it. Part 2 asks the question I'm Still On-Premises, Is That OK? and in part 3 we explore SaaS in Beyond IaaS, Cloud for the SMB, the Enterprise, and Beyond! Did you know AWS came about partly…
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How to Choose a Hyperconverged Infrastructure Solution
Running a traditional data center infrastructure for years can put your company in a rut, especially when it’s time to pick a new solution. When electing to trade out your traditional infrastructure for a sleek new hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), it can be a difficult paradigm to shift. So many questions can arise in…
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3 Ways AI Is Changing Social Media
Social media has become a mainstream part of our lives. Day in and day out, most of us are using social media to do micro-blogging, interact with family, share photos, capture moments, and have fun. Over the years, social media has changed how we interact with others, how we use our language, and how we see the world.…
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Putting on your X-Ray goggles to Visualize the Business Services Spectrum
I love watching those modern movies where IT works magically. In these movies, any average Joe with access to a computer or terminal can instantly access anything with seamless effort. Everything is clear and neat, we’re presented with impeccably clean data centers, long alleys of servers with no spaghetti cables lying…
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Application Dependency Mapping: Security and Ongoing ADM
Application Dependency Mapping: Security and Ongoing ADM Well, here we are. Finally, on the last post of this series. If you have not been following along, you can find the previous posts: part one, part two, part three, part four, and part five. And, if you have been following along, I hope you have found at least…
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Is collaboration something I should be thinking about?
Over the past few years, we have seen an ever-changing landscape when it comes to technology. When I first started in IT, my company decided on IBM for everything. Servers, storage, and even the backup tools were delivered by them. But today’s solutions are being built to suit the customer’s specific needs and no vendor…