Randolph-Brooks Federal Credit Union is more than just a bank. It is a financial cooperative intent on helping its members save time, save money and earn money. Over the years, the credit union has grown from providing financial resources to military service members and their families to serving hundreds of thousands of members across Texas and around the world. RBFCU has a presence in three major market areas — Austin, Dallas and San Antonio — and has more than 55 branches dedicated to serving members and the community.
First and foremost, RBFCU is people. It’s the more than 1,800 employees who serve members’ needs each day. It’s the senior team and Board of Directors that guide the credit union’s growth. It’s the members who give their support and loyalty to the credit union each day.
To help its employees provide the credit union’s members with the highest levels of services and support, Randolph-Brooks Federal Credit Union relies on IGEL’s endpoint computing solutions.
This eBook explains how to identify problems with vSphere and how to solve them. Before we begin, we need to start off with an introduction to a few things that will make life easier. We’ll start with a troubleshooting methodology and how to gather logs. After that, we’ll break this eBook into the following sections: Installation, Virtual Machines, Networking, Storage, vCenter/ESXi and Clustering.
ESXi and vSphere problems arise from many different places, but they generally fall into one of these categories: Hardware issues, Resource contention, Network attacks, Software bugs, and Configuration problems.
A typical troubleshooting process contains several tasks: 1. Define the problem and gather information. 2. Identify what is causing the problem. 3. Fix the problem, implement a fix.
One of the first things you should try to do when experiencing a problem with a host, is try to reproduce the issue. If you can find a way to reproduce it, you have a great way to validate that the issue is resolved when you do fix it. It can be helpful as well to take a benchmark of your systems before they are implemented into a production environment. If you know HOW they should be running, it’s easier to pinpoint a problem.
You should decide if it’s best to work from a “Top Down” or “Bottom Up” approach to determine the root cause. Guest OS Level issues typically cause a large amount of problems. Let’s face it, some of the applications we use are not perfect. They get the job done but they utilize a lot of memory doing it.
In terms of virtual machine level issues, is it possible that you could have a limit or share value that’s misconfigured? At the ESXi Host Level, you could need additional resources. It’s hard to believe sometimes, but you might need another host to help with load!
Once you have identified the root cause, you should assess the impact of the problem on your day to day operations. When and what type of fix should you implement? A short-term one or a long-term solution? Assess the impact of your solution on daily operations. Short-term solution: Implement a quick workaround. Long-term solution: Reconfiguration of a virtual machine or host.
Now that the basics have been covered, download the eBook to discover how to put this theory into practice!
The cloud computing era is well and truly upon us, and knowing how to take advantage of the benefits of this computing paradigm while maintaining security, manageability, and cost control are vital skills for any IT professional in 2020 and beyond. And its importance is only getting greater.
In this eBook, we’re going to focus on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) on Microsoft’s Azure platform - learning how to create VMs, size them correctly, manage storage, networking, and security, along with backup best practices. You’ll also learn how to operate groups of VMs, deploy resources based on templates, managing security and automate your infrastructure. If you currently have VMs in your own datacenter and are looking to migrate to Azure, we’ll also teach you that.
If you’re new to the cloud (or have experience with AWS/GCP but not Azure), this book will cover the basics as well as more advanced skills. Given how fast things change in the cloud, we’ll cover the why (as well as the how) so that as features and interfaces are updated, you’ll have the theoretical knowledge to effectively adapt and know how to proceed.
You’ll benefit most from this book if you actively follow along with the tutorials. We will be going through terms and definitions as we go – learning by doing has always been my preferred way of education. If you don’t have access to an Azure subscription, you can sign up for a free trial with Microsoft. This will give you 30 days 6 to use $200 USD worth of Azure resources, along with 12 months of free resources. Note that most of these “12 months” services aren’t related to IaaS VMs (apart from a few SSD based virtual disks and a small VM that you can run for 750 hours a month) so be sure to get everything covered on the IaaS side before your trial expires. There are also another 25 services that have free tiers “forever”.
Now you know what’s in store, let’s get started!
Metallic is a new SaaS backup and recovery solution based on Commvault's data protection software suite, proven in the marketplace for more than 20 years. It is designed specifically for the needs of medium-scale enterprises but is architected to grow with them based on data growth, user growth, or other requirements. Metallic initially offers either monthly or annual subscriptions through reseller partners; it will be available through cloud service providers and managed service providers over time. The initial workload use cases for Metallic include virtual machine (VM), SQL Server, file server, MS Office 365, and endpoint device recovery support; the company expects to add more use cases and supported workloads as the solution evolves.
Metallic is designed to offer flexibility as one of the service's hallmarks. Aspects of this include:
Part 1 explains the fundamentals of backup and how to determine your unique backup specifications. You'll learn how to:
Part 2 shows you what exceptional backup looks like on a daily basis and the steps you need to get there, including:
Part 3 guides you through the process of creating a reliable disaster recovery strategy based on your own business continuity requirements, covering:
Managing Windows user profiles can be a complex and challenging process. Better profile management is usually sought by organizations looking to reduce Windows login times, accommodate applications that do not adhere to best practice application data storage, and to give users the flexibility to login to any Windows Operating System (OS) and have their profile follow them.
Note that additional profile challenges and solutions are covered in a related ProfileUnity whitepaper entitled “User Profile and Environment Management with ProfileUnity.” To efficiently manage the complex challenges of today’s diverse Windows profile environments, Liquidware ProfileUnity exclusively features two user profile technologies that can be used together or separately depending on the use case. These include:
1. ProfileDisk™, a virtual disk based profile that delivers the entire profile as a layer from an attached user VHD or VMDK, and
2. Profile Portability, a file and registry based profile solution that restores files at login, post login, or based on environment triggers.
CloudCasa supports all major Kubernetes managed cloud services and distributions, provided they are based on Kubernetes 1.13 or above. Supported cloud services include Amazon EKS, DigitalOcean, Google GKE, IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, and Microsoft AKS. Supported Kubernetes distributions include Kubernetes.io, Red Hat OpenShift, SUSE Rancher, and VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. Multiple worker node architectures are supported, including x86-64, ARM, and S390x.
With CloudCasa, managing data protection in complex hybrid cloud or multi-cloud environments is as easy as managing it for a single cluster. Just add your multiple clusters and cloud databases to CloudCasa, and you can manage backups across them using common policies, schedules, and retention times. And you can see and manage all your backups in a single easy-to-use GUI.
Top 10 Reasons for Using CloudCasa:
With CloudCasa, we have your back based on Catalogic Software’s many years of experience in enterprise data protection and disaster recovery. Our goal is to do all the hard work for you to backup and protect your multi-cloud, multi-cluster, cloud native databases and applications so you can realize the operational efficiency and speed of development advantages of containers and cloud native applications.
Kaleida Health was looking to modernize the digital experience for its clinicians and back office support staff. Aging and inconsistent desktop hardware and evolving Windows OS support requirements were taxing the organization’s internal IT resources. Further, the desire to standardize on Citrix VDI for both on-site and remote workers meant the healthcare organization needed to identify a new software and hardware solution that would support simple and secure access to cloud workspaces.
The healthcare organization began the process by evaluating all of the major thin client OS vendors, and determined IGEL to be the leader for multiple reasons – it is hardware agnostic, stable and has a small footprint based on Linux OS, and it offers a great management platform, the IGEL UMS, for both on-site users and remote access.
Kaleida Health also selected LG thin client monitors early on because the All-in-One form factor supports both back office teams and more importantly, clinical areas including WoW carts, letting medical professionals securely log in and access information and resources from one, protected data center.
Ransomware is a growing threat to every organization on the planet; it seems we cannot go a day without seeing another high-profile ransomware attack being detailed in mainstream media.
Cyber-criminals are innovating at a phenomenal pace in this growing ‘industry’ because they have the funds to do so. In fact many cyber-criminal groups have more funds than most enterprises.
The disruption these attacks are causing to businesses is huge with billions of dollars’ worth of revenue being lost due to system outages caused via ransomware attacks.
Research has shown that a 41% increase in attacks has occurred since the beginning of 2021 with a staggering 93% increase year over year.
Companies are getting hit via ransomware every day, but how does it get in? Some of the most common ways ransomware is getting in is via the following methods:
1. Phishing emails that launch ransomware attacks via inline links, links in attachments, or fake attachments.2. Browsing unknown links and websites.3. Downloading and accidentally running infected software.4. Inserting or connecting an infected disk, disc, or drive.5. Operating system based vulnerabilities if the OS is not patched to the latest levels.6. Plugin based vulnerabilities if plugins are not patched to the latest levels.7. Infrastructure vulnerabilities (network, storage etc.) if not patched to the latest levels.
With the shift in the computing paradigm to the cloud, the Azure ecosystem is quickly becoming a critical platform for IT pros to grasp and adopt. But how do you make the leap while maintaining security, manageability, and cost-control?
Whether you’re making new VMs directly in the cloud, have VMs in your own datacenter and are looking to migrate to Azure, or you’re looking to manage VMs with cloud-based tools regardless of where they live, The SysAdmin Guide to Azure Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas) will teach you to set up and maintain a high-performing Azure IaaS environment.
Written, and now updated, by Paul Schnackenburg, veteran IT consultant and trainer, this free 100+ page guide covers:• VM sizing and deployment• Migration• Storage and networking• Security and identity• Infrastructure as code• Back up and replication• Azure Active Directory• Azure Arc• Automanage• and more!
Given the speed of change in the cloud, this eBook covers the why (as well as the how) so that as features and interfaces are updated, you’ll know how to proceed. This second edition also has two new chapters, Automanage (Chapter 11) and Azure Arc (Chapter 12), which have been added to bring a lot of automation and cloud-based management to Azure IaaS, all lessening the burden on your time.
Migrating to the cloud no longer seems a question of if, but when. Make the cloud work for you. Download your free copy today!