zackm ✭✭✭✭✭

upvotes have been duly applied

I may or may not be making that this weekend...

#bumpsquad​ #bump_squad​

Welcome all! Don't forget to get the URL for the super-secret-squirrel-fancy-shiny-things-unicorns-and-sugar lounge!

someone getting curious about the "Example Reboot Job" in NCM...

I would love to see some more systems in the cloud for various reasons, but a database? That's just something that should scare any admin!

love this read. (still waiting on the screencast of how to take that data and make a pretty chart) I really appreciate the point on expecting the unexpected. From my experience, if you trend 1% growth over 3 yrs. (made-up numbers here), you will get a budget for exactly that. The business needs to understand and appreciate…

I've generally found that tying your SLAs into what your vendors can do is step 1 (you can't fix things faster than you can fix things...) But secondary to that, I've seen great success with removing the user from the SLA and tying in the cost to the business. Allowing management to understand how a single printer may cost…

http://youtu.be/ebD2r-8vo8Y?t=25s

Great post! I generally teach that the IP SLA architecture should take just as much priority as is given to the architecture of Flow technologies. Understanding that they are different on their usage is fine, but taking into account some of the basics such as resource utilization, bandwidth concerns, duplication of data,…

Jfrazier hit the nail on the head. You can spend all the money in the world adding tools to tell you when things are a little off, but if you don't know and/or understand the underlying technology, you can't really expect the tool(s) to give you a root-cause analysis. To be fair, the tools are getting closer and closer to…

Done. Happy New Year Everyone! -ZackM Loop1 Systems: SolarWinds Training and Professional Services * LinkedIN: Loop1 Systems * Facebook: Loop1 Systems * Twitter: @Loop1Systems

Exactly. There was a time only a few years back where I would not personally recommend a virtualized SQL box. But that's not even outside of the 'norm' these days. With the balance of HA/FT solutions, crazy 99.999% SLAs, and a 24x7 world; how can we even pretend that virtualization is not a proper go-to solution anymore?

This reminds me of the high-level user I had a few jobs back that had her own office. In said office was the dreaded sheet-o-passwords. But this was next-level in the arena of horrible ideas. She had every password for the myriad of applications she used AND account information and passwords for all of her personal…

Generally speaking, I am not a fan of any CPU alerts on Windows boxes (unless it's the Ultimate CPU Alert!) But especially so for databases for all of the reasons you mention here. Guidance behind CPU alerts from my perspective to clients has been on 2 distinct tracks usually: 1) If you do not have SAM or DPA; then use NPM…

http://thwack.solarwinds.com/docs/DOC-172697

This is absolutely accurate! One of the best enhancements that SW could make immediately would be recalculating ALL baselines in intervals like you currently can with interfaces. EDIT: Well I didn't see an existing feature request so... https://thwack.solarwinds.com/ideas/4496

Generally, the clients I work with do not have log aggregators. And the ones that do were not really using them for "forensics" so to speak. More aptly, they used them as a single IP address for all logs to go to so they could simplify their configurations across the enterprise. (These are generally global companies or…

To be fair: I completely trust my wife because she has earned my trust and I have earned hers. I somewhat trust vendors because I believe they generally have best interest at heart, but still have a bottom line. I somewhat distrust the internet because anecdotal evidence and sample bias <> empirical evidence I do not trust…

Lump of coal in my stocking! Huzzah!!! Congrats to the winners! Happy holidays folks.

"Keep it Shiny" During my time in the Marines, it was common to have Officers in charge who were not what you might call 'technically-gifted'. Moral of the story: if there are status reports to be sent, "Keep it Shiny" and only show actual critical events (hide warnings). Otherwise, be prepared for a 2 hour discussion on…

DanielleH - today's submission just went to a blank screen after clicking 'submit' Hopefully, it's just me, but thought you should be aware. Happy Monday!

While I will be the first to admit that I do not ever use linux (past the few linux-based SW apps), posts like this always make me want to! I honestly just never find a solid use case in my day-to-day so it keeps getting shelved behind other stuff like my "Learn _____ in 30 days of lunches" books. Thanks for the cool post,…

My fellow MVP zackm can school anyone on some alerting theory. ... he says after listening to Zack's crazy rant(s) about alerting and how everyone is doing it wrong!!! Thanks for the mention jeremyxmentzell​, for the sake of the group, I'll stay off my soapbox here. lol

amazing stuff; kudos good sir! One thing I would add, you don't have to change your global execution policy, you can simply add a bypass in-line that will only apply during the execution of the script; and leave the global settings alone (and keeping the security people in their dungeons) ex:…

That was originally my though, but the team of DBAs I was working with last week were adamant that they wanted to alert on how many times growth had occurred (per database) as opposed to how much growth occurred overall. They are coming off of CA Nimsoft and had alerts setup for this on that end. I did not get a chance to…

can we please see some steps with screenshots for confirmation of how this functionality should work? I have tested what I think should work in NCM 7.4.1 and have no noticable differences between the rules. RULE: RESULTS: Any details would be greatly appreciated cvachovecj​

The days of poking holes in firewalls and perpetrating truly sophisticated attacks from the outside in are largely gone, reserved for movies... HACK THE PLANET!!!