read

And more blogs and sites I’ve been reading and sharing

A little bit of a longer one than usual, as I was part way through writing this the other month, then I got distracted with other blog posts.

Hope you find some of these useful.

Documentation

EtherealMinds Eleven Rules of Design Documentation – This is one the best articles I’ve read in a long time, and reiterates the fact you need to keep it simple and a diagram replaces a thousand words.

Microsoft

How to find expensive, inefficient and long running LDAP queries in Active Directory – Have you ever wondered what clients were sending expensive or inefficient LDAP queries to your domain controllers? Are long running LDAP queries possibly leading to poor server application performance or even failures of these applications? What about which clients are sending an excessive amount of LDAP queries to domain controllers? Are these queries leading to high CPU utilization on your DCs? Are these queries even completing or are they timing out in some cases?

Have you suspected all of the above might be happening but had no easy way to identify such queries or the IP addresses sending them? Today with some help from PowerShell we will finally have that easy way you’ve been looking for. Just check out this blog post!!!!

Getting Started with Nano Server – Lets be honest, this is exciting, especially after Microsoft announced they had perfected Nano Server by running the Azure platform on it, talk about putting your money where you mouth is!

Infrastructure

FlexPod Solutions: Lessons Learned From an Early Adopter – An interesting read, I’m not big on NetApp tbh, mainly because I’m a new wave of storage kinda guy, but they still have a huge market share, despite their figures dropping recently.

VMware

Upgrading Home Lab to ESXi 6.0 – Quick explanation of updating a Home HP Microserver with the latest HP customized ESXi 6.0 bundle.

Using Dell Management Suite for patching servers – How to utilize the Dell management products (OpenManage, Dell Repository Manager, and the Dell Management Plug-in) to connect to your vSphere environment and manage the firmware and driver updates needed for your Dell hardware.

To use DVS or not to use DVS – An old post, but still relevant, also works in dispelling some myths around DVS

How should bulk operations such as adding ESXi hosts work? – William Lam giving us the inside scoop on making life easier when managing ESXi hosts through bulk operations

vSphere 6.0 Storage Features Part 7: VAAI XCOPY improvements – Lets be honest, Cormac is the man when it comes to deep dives in the VMware platform, and this current series around the vSphere 6.0 storage features doesn’t disappoint!

Building the Right Network for your VMware NSX Deployment – VMware NSX is a hot topic within the SDN conversation, and many customers are looking to deploy it, for test, or proof of concept purposes.

VDI

A small website ran by a private consultant and has some information on POCs and other bits surrounding VMware. – http://www.pocs.nl/pocs/en/tyechnical/vmware/106-vmware-vdi-pocs.html

Veeam

VMCE v9 – Another exam to take? – Ok a self promotion here for a forum post that I created, but as v9 of Veeam arrives in Q3, this means the v8 certification has expired with 8 months or so, and that is not right if you ask me, because If you work for a Veeam partner, its required you have a VMCE in your business!!!

Education/Training

Cybrary.it – Cybrary is a free and open source, online information technology (IT), computer training and cyber security training environment for the world. We are dedicated to keeping the world’s IT professionals prepared for this ever-changing industry and its technologies. You can learn almost anything IT and security related for free, and you can help others to do the same. Take a look at what you can learn:

  • Systems Administration
  • Network Administration
  • Cyber Security

This means you can take courses for CompTIA exams, Cisco CCNA, CISSIP, Ethical Hacking and more.

My experience with the VCP6-DCV beta delta exam (code 2V0-621D) – Pretty self-explanatory, I was hoping to take the VCP6 beta exam after passing the VCP5-DCV, but they closed on the same day I passed 🙁

VCP 6 Delta Beta Exam Study Material (series) – Same reasons for the above, and these posts will still be relevant once the VCP6 are fully available outside of beta.

Understanding the VMware Exam changes – A focus on the changes in VCAP exams and upgrade paths, but touches on the other exams too

Security

Short pins sink Orgs – An interesting blog post on security issues and short pin codes, one to make you think about your current practices.

Other

The Admin Admin podcast – Found these guys after they linked to my blog and I started getting traffic hits from their website, a nice little podcast produced by 3 engineers that cover various topics.

Regards

Dean

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