Hands-on experience with network hardware and software can solidify certification-test concepts or let you practice skills that may be part of a cert exam, and the process can be helped along by use of a home lab. But how do you go about building one?Start by identifying your learning goals and figuring out the hardware and software they’ll require. If you’re focused on applications, server environments, automation, or identity management, a server for hosting virtual environments may suffice. But if you’re interested in networking at Layers 1, 2 and 3, you’ll need some physical networking hardware such as routers, switches, or hardware firewalls. This is especially true if you’re seeking vendor certification on specific devices.To read this article in full, please click here
Hands-on experience with network hardware and software can solidify certification-test concepts or let you practice skills that may be part of a cert exam, and the process can be helped along by use of a home lab. But how do you go about building one?Start by identifying your learning goals and figuring out the hardware and software they’ll require. If you’re focused on applications, server environments, automation, or identity management, a server for hosting virtual environments may suffice. But if you’re interested in networking at Layers 1, 2 and 3, you’ll need some physical networking hardware such as routers, switches, or hardware firewalls. This is especially true if you’re seeking vendor certification on specific devices.To read this article in full, please click here
Modern networks require more dynamic changes than traditional networks, and the solution to building these dynamic capabilities is network automation, which means the job of network engineers is changing.Historically, network reconfigurations required manual work that might require network downtime while changes were made. Network automation has the potential to mitigate this downtime by re-routing network traffic or scheduling the downtime for off-peak hours.To meet the challenges of this change, traditionally trained network engineers may benefit from certifications in automation. Engineers need ways to minimize the time-consuming, error-prone manual changes that ever-changing workloads demand.To read this article in full, please click here
Skill development has always been a must for anyone in an IT career, but this is especially true as cloud services mature and the components of cloud infrastructure trickle down into the rapidly evolving corporate data center.Whether you are looking to refresh existing skills on the latest technologies or branch out into a new specialty there are a host of invaluable resources available at no cost to you from some of the biggest vendors in the computing industry.The result for IT pros is that vendors’ marketing budget could very easily be your ticket to advancement should the skills they teach become needed where you work now or at a different organization.To read this article in full, please click here
By now you’ve probably heard about Mastodon, the open-source microblogging platform that’s been gaining popularity since Elon Musk took over Twitter.A major feature of the platform is it’s de-centralized, distributed architecture that provides resilience, but a downside is that it can cause congestion and increase latency for the unprepared.Here’s how Mastodon works. Its servers (instances) operate semi-independently of each other, and users register with servers geared toward communities that interest them. But users can follow and interact with others from across the Fediverse—users hosted on other Mastodon instances as well as other services utilizing the open-source ActivityPub protocol from the Worldwide Web Consortium.To read this article in full, please click here
On the surface, Active Directory groups are a simple and straightforward way to manage identities (users and/or computers) and assign permissions. Users or computers are added as group members, and the group is referenced in access control lists (ACL) on file shares, mailboxes, applications, or other corporate resources. But experienced admins know that this simplicity quickly goes out the window as environments scale. As group memberships grow, management of memberships becomes increasingly complex.Over the years, Microsoft and others have developed best practices for managing groups and permissions in an Active Directory environment. These strategies are something of a lost art, but there’s value to be gained by leveraging these layers of sophistication.To read this article in full, please click here
On the surface, Active Directory groups are a simple and straightforward way to manage identities (users and/or computers) and assign permissions. Users or computers are added as group members, and the group is referenced in access control lists (ACL) on file shares, mailboxes, applications, or other corporate resources. But experienced admins know that this simplicity quickly goes out the window as environments scale. As group memberships grow, management of memberships becomes increasingly complex.Over the years, Microsoft and others have developed best practices for managing groups and permissions in an Active Directory environment. These strategies are something of a lost art, but there’s value to be gained by leveraging these layers of sophistication.To read this article in full, please click here
A big lesson brought home early in the COVID-19 pandemic is that IT requirements can suddenly change at an explosive rate, and the only way to prepare for such events is to build as much flexibility as possible into corporate networks.Many large enterprises had already embraced this concept, but smaller ones with fewer financial resources had not. The pandemic moved the needle for many of them from viewing flexibility as a luxury to seeing it as a core functionality they can’t afford to be without.SD-WAN buyers guide: Key questions to ask vendors
So what goes into achieving the level of flexibility that lets business adjust on the fly to 100% of their employees working remotely or situations where critical staff can’t come into the office?To read this article in full, please click here
