What is an SSD? The term SSD (Solid State Drive), can refer to any drive that uses solid state components to store information, or more to the point - has no moving parts. When we hear terms like 'Flash Drive' or 'Thumb Drive', we typically don't think SSD, but...
Infrastructure
Upgrade to HWMonitor Pro and Make Your Computer’s Sensors Work For You!
Some time ago, I wrote an article about CPUID’s wonderful tool, HWMonitor. Today I want to follow up on that and give a few tips on how to make it more useful. Firstly, HWMonitor is a free tool, but CPUID publishes a Professional version of the product, predictably...
How to Install Snort on a Redhat 6 Box
Snort is used for performing security checks on network boundaries. This can be done on the outside Untrust network but is sometimes more useful to look at what’s getting through your firewall into the web servers. Follow our step-by-step instructions on how...
5 Minutes with Windows 8 and Office 2013
Dell Latitude ST This is the Dell Latitude ST, which can be had from the Dell Outlet store for about $300. It’s a 10-inch tablet slate running an Atom Z670 and 2GB of RAM – like a Netbook without a keyboard. Instead, it has an N-trig digitizer that supports both...
Do you Think an Engineering Employee is Really Cheaper Than a Consultant? … Think Again.
Occasionally I’ll get a comment from a potential client who is particularly price sensitive about the rates for our consultants, and the comment usually goes something like: “I can hire a full-time employee who would cost me a lot less than what you are going to...
Deploying IPv6 on a Cisco IOS router with a Tunnel Broker
The time has finally come! Just a few days ago, major internet companies participated in IPv6 Launch Day – meaning from this point forward, they will be running their production systems and making their services available to you via the IPv6 in addition to IPv4....
Gain Greater Control Over Windows Disk Defragmentation with Defraggler
This week we have a look at an alternative to Windows Disk Defragmenter. Piriform has a number of Windows utility offerings, among which is Defraggler. Defraggler has the following capabilities, a number of which are not available with the Windows default utility. 1....
Outsource Your System Administration to Set Your Engineers Free
The inquisitive nature of engineers, which makes them so good at designing, developing and building products, can also lead them to become distracted by other “interesting things” like managing the very systems and tools that allow them to do their engineering....
Setting up Web metrics with Webalizer
When managing websites, it's important to have metrics on the site for both admin and content owners. One of the easiest ways to do this is Webalizer. It is a free tool that uses the Apache access log to provide a graphical presentation of usage. Attached is a quick...
How to add more disk space to your Redhat server without reformatting
One of the common tasks for any system administrator is managing disk space on a server. It doesn't matter what operating system the server is running, free disk space is always something you keep an eye on. I won't go into a boring lecture on why managing disk space...
Creating a Custom Nagios Plugin
Nagios is an invaluable tool to help monitor a customer's infrastructure. Last year, I explained how easy it was to be able to integrate Network Appliance health checks. In fact, Nagios provides a plethora of out of the box plugins. Additional plugins are available...
In Celebration of IPv6
On June 8th of last year, an event known as World IPv6 Day was celebrated. Well, “celebrated” might carry a little too much emphasis – perhaps instead, World IPv6 Day was observed. And what did you do to celebrate this observance of the future? Well, if you are like...