Paul Venezia

Author Archives: Paul Venezia

7 free tools every network needs

In the real estate world, the mantra is location, location, location. In the network and server administration world, the mantra is visibility, visibility, visibility. If you don't know what your network and servers are doing at every second of the day, you're flying blind. Sooner or later, you're going to meet with disaster.Fortunately, many good tools, both commercial and open source, are available to shine much-needed light into your environment. Because good and free always beat good and costly, I've compiled a list of my favorite open source tools that prove their worth day in and day out in networks of any size. From network and server monitoring to trending, graphing, and even switch and router configuration backups, these utilities will see you through.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

7 free tools every network needs

In the real estate world, the mantra is location, location, location. In the network and server administration world, the mantra is visibility, visibility, visibility. If you don't know what your network and servers are doing at every second of the day, you're flying blind. Sooner or later, you're going to meet with disaster.Fortunately, many good tools, both commercial and open source, are available to shine much-needed light into your environment. Because good and free always beat good and costly, I've compiled a list of my favorite open source tools that prove their worth day in and day out in networks of any size. From network and server monitoring to trending, graphing, and even switch and router configuration backups, these utilities will see you through.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

7 free tools every network needs

"I am all about useful tools. One of my mottos is 'the right tool for the right job.'" –Martha StewartIf your "right job" involves wrangling computer networks and figuring out how to do digital things effectively and efficiently or diagnosing why digital things aren't working as they're supposed to, you've got your hands full. Not only does your job evolve incredibly quickly becoming evermore complex, but whatever tools you use need frequent updating and/or replacing to keep pace, and that's what we're here for; to help in your quest for the right tools.[ Don’t miss customer reviews of top remote access tools and see the most powerful IoT companies . | Get daily insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] We've done several roundups of free network tools in the past, and since the last one, technology has, if anything, sped up even more. To help you keep up, we've compiled a new shortlist of seven of the most useful tools that you should add to your toolbox.To read this article in full, please click here

Review: QNAP TVS-882T NAS piles on the features

We’ve seen a steady flow of multifunction NAS boxes over the years. What began as relatively straightforward uses of Linux software RAID and mildly customized hardware has blossomed into a crop of multifaceted appliances that sport a full-on rampage of capabilities. In some cases, the NAS functionality may be one of the more minor considerations. QNAP’s TVS-882T is a prime example of this new class of NAS.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Review: QNAP TVS-882T NAS piles on the features

We’ve seen a steady flow of multifunction NAS boxes over the years. What began as relatively straightforward uses of Linux software RAID and mildly customized hardware has blossomed into a crop of multifaceted appliances that sport a full-on rampage of capabilities. In some cases, the NAS functionality may be one of the more minor considerations. QNAP’s TVS-882T is a prime example of this new class of NAS.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Linux at 25: Linus Torvalds on the evolution and future of Linux

The last time I had the occasion to interview Linus Torvalds, it was 2004, and version 2.6 of the Linux kernel had been recently released. I was working on a feature titled “Linux v2.6 scales the enterprise.” The opening sentence was “If commercial Unix vendors weren’t already worried about Linux, they should be now.” How prophetic those words turned out to be.More than 12 years later -- several lifetimes in the computing world -- Linux can be found in every corner of the tech world. What started as a one-man project now involves thousands of developers. On this, its 25th anniversary, I once again reached out to Torvalds to see whether he had time to answer some questions regarding Linux’s origins and evolution, the pulse of Linux’s current development community, and how he sees operating systems and hardware changing in the future. He graciously agreed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Linux at 25: How Linux changed the world

I walked into an apartment in Boston on a sunny day in June 1995. It was small and bohemian, with the normal detritus a pair of young men would scatter here and there. On the kitchen table was a 15-inch CRT display married to a fat, coverless PC case sitting on its side, network cables streaking back to a hub in the living room. The screen displayed a mess of data, the contents of some logfile, and sitting at the bottom was a Bash root prompt decorated in red and blue, the cursor blinking lazily.I was no stranger to Unix, having spent plenty of time on commercial Unix systems like OSF/1, HP-UX, SunOS, and the newly christened Sun Solaris. But this was different.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Review: Cisco ACI shakes up SDN

The concept of object health is present throughout ACI. When problems are detected, an object’s health score drops from 100, with lower scores indicating greater severity. This is hierarchical, so while a port that is disconnected on a single endpoint will show a health score of 0, the fabric node containing that port may show a health score of 50, and the application containing the down endpoint may show a score of 80. This can be traced visually through the Web UI by selecting the Health view on the affected application. This makes it extremely easy to pinpoint problems on a vast fabric.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Review: Cisco ACI shakes up SDN

The concept of object health is present throughout ACI. When problems are detected, an object’s health score drops from 100, with lower scores indicating greater severity. This is hierarchical, so while a port that is disconnected on a single endpoint will show a health score of 0, the fabric node containing that port may show a health score of 50, and the application containing the down endpoint may show a score of 80. This can be traced visually through the Web UI by selecting the Health view on the affected application. This makes it extremely easy to pinpoint problems on a vast fabric.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

NAS shoot-out: QNAP vs. Synology

The past few years have seen a meteoric rise in the breadth and scope of small-business NAS, and while the top names in this space may have brought the core disciplines of NAS and even SAN to maturity, they continue to add features to their hardware. The latest from QNAP and Synology -- two longtime leaders in this market -- showcase this trend.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

First look: VMware vSphere 6 keeps its edge

In the not so distant past, VMware held a long and commanding lead in the server virtualization space, offering core features that were simply unmatched by the competition. In the past few years, however, competition in virtualization has been fierce, the competitors have drawn near, and VMware has been left with fewer ways to distinguish itself.The competition may have grown over the years, and VMware may not enjoy quite as large a lead as it once did -- but it still enjoys a lead. With useful improvements to a number of key features, as well as the bundling of functions such as backup and recovery that were previously available separately, vSphere 6 is a worthy addition to the vSphere line. That said, some of the major advances in this version, such as long-distance vMotion, will matter most to larger vSphere shops.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here