jim.couch

Love this months mission. Solarwinds is already a great company but its (in my opinion) largely due to the fact that they actually listen to, and work with the customers. Jim

I am not a fan of the web reports yet. I think they will get better and I also think they are better than my knowledge in how to use them. I say that cause I totally disregarded them when I couldnt get a report I was looking for but after I went to training at Loop1 I learned enough about them to come back and create the…

Just checking to see if I won the NVIDIA Shield 16 GB! yet.. NO? ok.. I'll check back hourly. I agree, I love the focus of this mission. WHAT? A company that CARES? Nice! Jim

Looking forward to this blog. I am a fan of deep packet inspection. I get to be the guy that helps stop the finger pointing. 

Oh boy maria.bungau! I just found where I, and apparently others, missed it. I STILL think that possibly the question should have allowed either answer based on what was in the whitepaper hint BUT.. I know what you're looking for.. Thanks for getting back to us either way.. Jim

SSL, although necessary, has been the number 1 difficulty for me when it comes to DPI. Great article.. keep them coming.

I dont work in that department but as far as I know 1. SQL Server 2. We have a team in place 3. The DBA team has some built in tools they use, but I'm not privy to names. 4. I know they have jobs and scripts for re-indexing, defrag, etc.

Well according to superfly99 we cant discuss it any longer or we all look like whining children. I wasnt whining at all, but I will complain about someone making comments that limit others from saying something when they think that the question is broken.. But we cant discuss that either. I dont like where this went..…

1. As for baselining, the tool we use is collecting and baselining on an ongoing basis. That said, it is just for packet throughput and not specific to DB performance. 2. Throughput, traffic, connections, etc 3. Constantly but within a limited set of production subnets. 4. Yes solely on monitoring and it does show trending…

I am interested in both actionable metrics and business impacting metrics. Actionable helps me with my job and the other makes the people who sign check happy. What metrics depends on what I am trying to solve. We are relatively new at looking at historical metrics. Jim

Groups and being able to use my custom properties ie Lat and Long.. is pretty criitcal. My users like maps and I love the look of the new maps but its needs to indicate status, location, and give me options like backgrounds overlays (ie weather map). It would also be cool (maybe this is possible now) if when I added a map…

Interesting. My apologies.. I hadnt noticed that. Jim

OMG you just tweaked the heck out of my geeky Network Hero brain and i NEED MORE.. Forgo all your network duties and create drawings.. and a theme.. and maybe motion pictures... I NEED IT!! Jim

I'm thankful our DBAs have their own monitoring to do what they will. 

Really interesting and good stuff here. My specialty is NOT security (thankfully we have others that are much better at that). But I have a strong desire to get better at it and appreciate the work you're putting into it. Although, I take strong offense to the "filthy people" comment.. To close to home! But seriously,…

I would say that most companies are not going to foot the bill for a separate internet circuit from the work related one, and further that upper management (the ones paying the bill) probably have no concept of what traffic is business and what traffic is Hulu, Netflix, etc. Not to mention aggregation points where maybe…

Very nice write up. At one point in time I wanted to learn more about Perl but I was going through a rough patch where I had put a lot of time and effort into studying for a technology that died. I guess it was at that point that I kind of being so "interested" in my career. Thats changed since then. Whats the best way to…

Congrats lhoyle

I agree that a "best practices" analyzer would be a great addition. As far as proactive changes I am always a little nervous and skeptical. In theory it seems awesome until that piece breaks something major and everyone is VERY mad. I prefer methods that alert me that xyz change should be made, and I make the decision to…

Great post. I've had to start learning BASH and TMSH lately. I am a complete NOVICE but its exciting to learn new skills. I agree about logging a verbose as possible, and then using tools to get whatever data you are after. Jim

I think its within reason that the company should be allowed to track corporate owned devices both inside and outside the office (to whatever extent they can). Not only that but its probably a great idea to be able to wipe that data remotely just incase it get stolen. But as far as personal BYOD devices are concerned, I…

SO Day three lists four answers and TWO of them are listed on page four of the hint. 50/50 I chose wrong. Partial credit DanielleH? Tried to word my post here so to not give away the correct answer. Jim

They arent too shabby BUT they are expensive and I would say that they arent the end all, be all. Also, the trick is getting management to understand that they are a totally different tool than say, Solarwinds Orion, and that we need both... I think they thought they could pay the money and replace one or the other. Jim

I've really enjoyed your blog posts on infosec.. For me, its difficult to go an learn hacker material or be on THOSE sites.. Even though, I know that is silly. I agree completely that its necessary to learn how hackers think and their methods order to protect my network from potential harm. I think that is one think that…

Its a good question. I dont like the idea of personal devices accessing sensitive corporate information. To me, that is a good dividing line. In this way, the corp doesnt need to install anything on my phone, laptop, etc and they have measures in place to keep me out of their data. Jim

As technology, and methods, change over the years there is always a line that is developed. It seems that the scenario begins with someone over stepping their power to the extreme that they can, and then being backed down by customer, user, citizen response. Over time, a standard is developed and while each still pushes…

Documentation and standardization. Our issue is agreeing on what to use to document and where to store that documentation. We have lots of documentation but if you cant locate it at 2am when something is down, its not worth much. Jim

I thought the same thing.. LOL I was like... Well, i guess I am not a power user.. even though I am doing just about everything I can with it at work and then coming in the next day and discovering odd and unique ways of doing MORE things. BUT, I suppose as long as I get the points.. Jim

I think any medium to large organization is feeling this pain. I know that in my work experience, we've been slow to put MDM at the top of our priority list and there is a bit of catching up to do. At my last position we were using Aruba controllers with Airwave and Clearpass to manage mobile devices. Typically the…

Seems like a common thread in the IT business to have a lack of standards or policies. I have had that problem as at least two positions I've been at. Jim