byrona ✭✭✭✭✭

The cloud can be affordable but it depends on what you are trying to do. The cloud can be expensive if you are looking at doing a "lift and shift", it's typically much more affordable if you can re-architect what you are doing and leverage more of the SaaS and PaaS based solutions.

Ah, well that keeps it simple! 

I agree with mdriskell‌, the lack of any other simple universal system will keep SNMP alive and well. jgherbert‌, have you seen any technologies on the horizon that are even close to being that simple universal replacement? I personally don't see a huge push to replace SNMP if for nothing else because of the simple "if it…

I think patching is one of the biggest challenges we have. As a MSP we include patching as one of the services we offer and it may seem difficult to keep your own companies systems patched, try keeping the systems a bunch of different companies patched. And it's not just the patching but we also need good reporting to show…

We do use NCM to manage our network devices. NCM has been a huge value in both helping us provide better security for our network layer as well as helping us quickly and easily pass our HIPAA and PCI audits. One of the easiest things you can do with NCM is identify and remove default accounts and user accounts that no…

Thanks for sharing and being so honest with your information!

Nice recap! Microsoft has definitely become a different type of company. I still know a lot of people that are still holding on to their feelings of the past toward Microsoft are are unwilling to re-engage and be open to see how they have changed.

Management needs to come to terms with the fact that if it makes an employee's work/life difficult, they will find another way. And it may not be the way you want. With this being said, I am curious how you would handle security requirements which are generally at odds with convenience and don't allow for compromise?

I think the security is overall a good thing and the technology for it is certainly there. Our monitoring technology and techniques will need to evolve to support the new security models.

The article on Passwords was really good. From a security standpoint I can't wait until 2-factor becomes a standard instead of the exception.

It's hard to imagine a world without Intel; mainly because ever since I entered the tech industry they have been a major component of it, specifically the CPU component. Most of the focus for Spectre and Meltdown is at Intel; however, ARM and AMD were both also vulnerable to this.

While I can't disagree with your speculation on that as I have had it myself, I think that would be a shame. WPM serves a different use case from Pingdom, if anything they should add integration between WPM and Pingdom.

We are using SolarWinds LEM. It not necessarily less from a direct product cost perspective; however, if you take everything else into consideration such as storage,system, network footprint and then factor in that you also have SIEM which we need anyway then you begin to see a significant savings.

Funny you say that ecklerwr1​; I had the exact same thought!

As others have already said, I love to see what you guys are doing and that there are still companies out there that care about community.

designerfx​ I about spit my coffee out when I read this, totally true and totally hilarious! Thanks for that!

When it has become standard fare for our industry to accept and joke about the passing of blame from one discipline group to another I can't help but think that the model is wrong; I suggested another approach in my comment on a discussion HERE. Would it make more sense to have a non-biased team with a member of each…

I live here in Oregon in the direct path of the Solar Eclipse and we have a TON of people coming to the state. They are expecting some of our smaller towns that are in the direct path to be overrun by people and RV's. 

If nothing else that is the one thing you had to love about Steve Jobs, his constant push for higher standards and his unwillingness to accept anything less. I would certainly like to see more of this in our industry.

This has been an awesome experience. I think the best part for me was seeing all of the different perspectives and how a single word can mean so many different things to different people.

After a decade of silence, this computer worm is back and researchers don't know why I like to think it's a retro thing, what was old is new again! Compliance as code I like the idea of this for the purposes of upholding code to certain standards. By doing this you know that code you are putting into your environment at…

We work with a few different government agencies and I have found that they are significantly behind the curve on most of this stuff and any changes for them generally takes forever so I am not sure how soon these predictions will come to fruition but based on my experiences I don't see it being any time soon.

Thanks. I should also note that there is overlap here with the Network Sonar tool in the Engineers Toolset. 

I really do like the idea of higher standards and not tolerating mediocrity as a culture as many companies seem to do.

Wait, there are people in IT that don't wear brown pants every day?

Congrats on your Microsoft MVP status sqlrockstar​!

I need this functionality also!

One thing I have really learned while working for a service provider is that your clients focus less on the outages you have and more on how you respond when you have them. If you excel at communication during and after the event and show up to work thought it with them then they see that you have a shared sense of…

It has come to the point where we are not just defending against people, we are defending against machines. To fight against them we need machines of our own; AI and ML based systems. I am not suggesting that the things you mention are not good because they are but we still need more. We also need to accept that we will…

I am going to have to agree with Jfrazier​ on this. We are a hybrid cloud services provider and out network is incredibly complicated. We are not only required to keep our networking up and running but also responsible for each of our clients who all have very different and unique environments with their own unique…