IT Operations: Page

Grow rapidly into a continuous delivery pipeline

IT organizations that undertake continuous delivery and deployment initiatives must find strategies to enable that nonstop rush into production without any space for massive or prolonged user-facing problems.

By Meredith Courtemanche • Nov. 1, 2018

It’s time to automate the help desk ticketing system

The help desk is no admin's favorite job -- and no user's favorite place. But with a little automation and AI, the help desk can become a more palatable experience for both parties.

By Muddu Sudhakar • Oct. 31, 2018

Use this Microsoft deployment tool for easier setups

It's not new, but the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit tends to be overlooked when administrators need a way to set up Windows in an automated fashion. See why MDT is worth using.

By Dan Franciscus • Oct. 31, 2018

Enable and disable Hyper-V secure boot with PowerShell

The manual process of enabling secure boot is time-consuming, so use PowerShell cmdlets and scripts to make it efficient to use secure boot in Hyper-V.

By Nirmal Sharma • Oct. 31, 2018

IBM Red Hat acquisition roils open source container management

IBM agreed to buy Red Hat with Kubernetes in mind for its multi-cloud management strategy, and it'll have far-reaching implications for the open source container management community, especially Cloud Foundry.

By Beth Pariseau • Oct. 30, 2018

Monad Manifesto

The Monad Manifesto is a document written by Jeffrey Snover in 2002 that outlined his idea for a new Windows systems administration tool named Monad, which was changed to Windows PowerShell.

By Alexander Gillis • Oct. 30, 2018

Use Microsoft SCVMM to clone a VM

There are some requirements you must meet to clone VMs with SCVMM, but the steps to clone an existing VM -- whether it's running, paused or shutdown -- are fairly simple.

By Nirmal Sharma • Oct. 29, 2018

Handy PowerShell ISE add-ons for server administrators

PowerShell ISE might be on the way out, but these extensions continue to sustain the development of management scripts for many Windows administrators.

By Tom Walat • Oct. 29, 2018

3 virtualization infrastructure design rules to shape your deployment

Admins can improve virtual infrastructure design by focusing their deployments on transparency and flexibility and critically evaluating emerging technologies.

By Nick Moore • Oct. 26, 2018

Cloud and containers rewrite monitoring and management rulebooks

IT performance management is tricky when it stretches as big as the public cloud and scrunches as small as a microservice. IT ops techniques must change to keep up.

By Mike Matchett • Oct. 25, 2018

Invest in an IT infrastructure upgrade -- or keep fixing it

Because upgrades to infrastructure equipment can be expensive and difficult, the easier decision is to renew a support contract. But delay comes at a cost, too.

By Brian Kirsch • Oct. 25, 2018

Nomad vs. Kubernetes talk prompts HashiCorp managed service plan

HashiCorp's founders say Nomad and Kubernetes are not mutually exclusive, but the company will launch a Nomad managed service to match cloud providers' turnkey Kubernetes services.

By Beth Pariseau • Oct. 25, 2018

Quantum supremacy and the path to encryption chaos

Widespread use of quantum computing isn't as far into the future as some might think. When it arrives, this powerful computing technology could turn IT security upside down.

By Nick Martin • Oct. 25, 2018

PowerShell Core 6.1 offers many small improvements

New PowerShell Core functionality includes the addition of Windows PowerShell 5.1 modules, making this version worth a closer look for administrators.

By Richard Siddaway • Oct. 24, 2018

Keep IT project planning on track with 5 principles

Whether you're a seasoned IT vet about to take on the biggest project yet or a new team member spearheading an important build, follow a project planning approach that limits scope and hits goals.

By Stephen Bigelow • Oct. 23, 2018

Why do admins need both powershell.exe and pwsh.exe?

While the PowerShell development team wants IT to move on to the newer PowerShell version, the powershell.exe executable will remain to avoid breaking changes.

By Tom Walat • Oct. 23, 2018

Container hosting requires in-depth service network plans

Microservices and containers complement each other with scalability and flexibility. But they can also compound network addressing problems in production without proper precautions.

By Tom Nolle • Oct. 22, 2018

IT pros shore up Prometheus monitoring via third-party tools

Upstream Prometheus monitoring isn't ready for prime time in enterprise environments, but it gets by with a little help from its friends, such as Sysdig and Rancher Labs.

By Beth Pariseau • Oct. 22, 2018

Direct NVMe performance with virtualization and storage tiers

Non-volatile memory express technologies have a host of benefits, but admins must use virtualization and storage tiers to best target NVMe performance boosts.

By Brian Kirsch • Oct. 22, 2018

Hyper-V vs. vSphere high availability features

Compare VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V HA approaches to see how they keep VMs and other workloads online when a host server crashes.

By Brien Posey • Oct. 22, 2018

How to use PowerShell JEA for task delegation

System administrators don't have to do every mundane task themselves anymore with help from Just Enough Administration. Get started with these instructions using PowerShell.

By Adam Bertram • Oct. 19, 2018

Top server sizing strategies for VMs

How many VMs can you put on a server? That depends on whether your hardware and virtual environment are well-matched. This tip offers four criteria to select the right servers.

By Alexander Gillis • Oct. 19, 2018

Netflix Spinnaker pipelines tighten bond with Kubernetes

The Netflix- and Google-led Spinnaker continuous deployment software project has added enterprise appeal with revamped Kubernetes integration.

By Beth Pariseau • Oct. 18, 2018

Can this Active Directory quiz stump you?

How much do you know about Active Directory? Find out with this Active Directory quiz on the service's basics, structure and capabilities.

By Stephen Bigelow • Oct. 17, 2018

Does DevOps for operations mean learning how to code?

What do operations folks need to know before they dive into DevOps? Automation is the key to a responsive environment, and users are your guiding light.

By Adam Fowler • Oct. 17, 2018