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Mitigating Cyber Risks: Part 1

Mitigating Cyber Risks: Part 1

My entire career has been surrounded by risk; mostly in the technology arena.  Regardless of the job role, from a technology engineer through risk manager, solutions architect, IT leader, and into my current role as a consulting engineer one thing has been commonplace – risk must be mitigated.  Today, risk is common place with every organization and thrives in the form of cyber threats; among…

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IT Strategic Roadmaps: A Commentary

IT Strategic Roadmaps: A Commentary

What is an IT Strategic Roadmap?  Most people look at them as a plan to defines the long and short-term goals for a product or solution within Information Technology.  While this is technically true, I believe this is a rather shallow way of looking at things.  If we look at this from a holistic view, a proper IT Strategic Roadmap – or any roadmap for that matter – can be a key driver in the…

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Boot From SAN? I Don't Think So...Anymore.

Boot From SAN? I Don’t Think So…Anymore.

Several years back, when I was a munchkin – okay not really, there was new trend called Boot from SAN.  This trend continues today.  I hopped on that bandwagon quickly when UCS released and the ability to use Service Profiles with Boot from SAN was a brilliant way of being able to recover server environments in a hurry, and even automatically, when a server failed. This was High Availability at…

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VDI Oh My!

This is a post originally written for the company blog — posted here for posterity. Have you seen the cost analysis sheets from various entities over the years pointing out how much money you can save with Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)? In most cases, they’re wrong. But like most things, there are outliers. Today I want to look at VDI and break it down and tell you why you might want to…

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A Data Center Engineers Look At Ransomware Protection

A Data Center Engineers Look At Ransomware Protection

Your worst nightmare just happened.  You have just been presented with a screen popup telling you that your data is being encrypted and that you have so many days to pay.  It gets worse.  Every day you delay, chunks of your data are deleted.   It happens.  I have been on the outside – helping restore data, remove the threats, and salvage business operations and prevent further damage.  I have a…

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I have my ballot today... So...

I have my ballot today… So…

Normally this blog is technology based but today I wander a bit. Forgive me. I cannot in good conscience vote for a man of ethical and moral standards like Trump. I understand that people are not perfect. It is how we react to that imperfection that defines us. As the President of the United States those reactions and actions need to be held to a higher standard. His levels of temper tantrum like…

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Musings On Employment

I love where I work.  I have liked my job before.  I have liked the people I work with before.  I have hated where I worked before.  I have been way underpaid before.  I have been laid-off before.  I have been on all sides of the spectrum.  I have never, been able to say that I love where I work — up until now.  Many times I have mused over why.  I can’t be certain that I speak for everyone — as…

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HyperFlex: An Enhanced Look

HyperFlex: An Enhanced Look

This is a post originally written for the company blog — posted here for posterity. In the IT industry, the phrase “we are pretty much a 100% physical shop” is one that you dread to hear – especially from a fast-growing company. Such was the case with a leader in the financial services industry recently when they asked Sentinel to install a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution for a new…

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SAN Based Snapshots & P2V Conversion Failure

SAN Based Snapshots & P2V Conversion Failure

This is a post moved over from my old blog — still relevant. I love P2V.  It works like a charm — except when it doesn’t… When it fails, it usually fails in the strangest ways possible, the errors are obtuse, and finding the underlying cause is a nightmare.  Well, I ran into the issue where the P2V would fail referencing an error with the snapshot and/or the disk ID.  Well, I assumed this was…

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SharePoint Large File Library Via Windows Explorer – Error

SharePoint Large File Library Via Windows Explorer – Error

This is a post moved over from my old blog — still relevant. Recently, I had the opportunity to take a look at an issue with accessing SharePoint file libraries through Windows Explorer UNC shares.  When those file libraries have HUGE numbers of files, the client will hang for upwards of five minutes and then error out with the following error: “[\\UNCLocation\] is not accessible. You might not…

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Cooking Up A Data Center -- With A Salmon Recipe To Boot

Cooking Up A Data Center — With A Salmon Recipe To Boot

Technology is an art.  If you use the wrong cables, servers, storage, switches, routers, etc. you can be sure to have a data center that puts a bad taste in your mouth.  You can achieve that bad taste by using poor quality ingredients, by assembling good or bad ingredients in the wrong way, or by designing a great system – but for the wrong purpose.  To illustrate that, let’s take a look at…

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CCIE In Ten Days? Am I Nuts? Probably.

CCIE In Ten Days? Am I Nuts? Probably.

Well… I am about to embark on a journey to Cisco Live!  Yep.  I set a goal several moths ago that I would prepare for an exam that I would take while I was there.  Today, it comes down to the wire — I have ten days till I arrive and I have not had the opportunity to study much.  So, today I begin my challenge.  Perhaps the hardest one of my life — well other than losing some weight.  Can I?  Is…

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FIGHT! The VMware vs. Hyper-V Debate Continues

FIGHT! The VMware vs. Hyper-V Debate Continues

Year over year, the debate continues.  Even after I write this blog post, the debate will continue.  VMware vs. Hyper-V.  The truth is that both hypervisors have their advantages and disadvantages.  To start with, let’s take a look at the prominent ones. VMware Advantages Thin Hypervisor with a tiny install that can be run on a SD card. FAST live migration (vMotion). This allows you to perform…

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First Look: EMC Unity & The Miracle Feature

First Look: EMC Unity & The Miracle Feature

A little while back, EMC announced and made available the EMC Unity Storage Array line.  Now, I am a HUGE fan of EMC and I am a bit terrified of what will be happening to the “World’s Best SANs” with the Dell takeover.  I know that Dell has not had time to really start poking around in EMC to the point where they could have made too much impact, so I was hoping that the Unity Storage Arrays would…

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Cisco HyperFlex: A Zero Day Review

Cisco HyperFlex: A Zero Day Review

Cisco HyperFlex.  A converged solution from Cisco.  Scary words, right?  Wrong! Today I had the privilege of working with Cisco on a deployment of HyperFlex.  I was expecting to run into issues bugs galore with this being a new to market product, and I can say that I was surprised.  Everything, and I mean everything went as smoothly as can be expected.  Not a single error.  Not one bug.  Not a…

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Your Core Values

Note: Several years back, I put this together along with several hundred other pages during some time I spent studying. This is a pretty rough draft, but some events from today led me to want to post this.  I did clean it up a bit (spelling and grammar) but that is about it.  Currently published in a strange category, but I will update it soon. The typical self-help book, regardless of purpose,…

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Load Balancing Exchange 2013 With Citrix NetScaler 11

Load Balancing Exchange 2013 With Citrix NetScaler 11

Today, I am publishing a small guide written and intended to be used as a starting point for Load Balancing Microsoft Exchange 2013 via Citrix NetScaler 11 Build 64.34 and newer with the following expectations: Provide Load Balancing (LB) to all Exchange services. Provide ActiveSync Kerberos Constrained Delegation to function with iPhone, iPad (iOS Configuration Utility or AirWatch), Android…