High Availability (HA) is a term that is beloved of the marketing people, with its connotations of an unspecific sense of reassurance. However, service reliability cannot be bought like bath salts: But, explains a seasoned and cynical expert in the field, HA can be more than the start of 'HAHA!'. There is a role for HA in keeping your services running, if used as part of a broader solution.… Read more
APEX can be a great way to create an application rapidly on an Oracle Database. Although it is generally straightforward, there are just a couple of things you have to watch out for.… Read more
It isn't straightforward to design a database application that has to provide text data in several languages. There are several problems to overcome such as, for example, allowing the translation bureau to work independently, using their own specialised formats. Fortunately, Oracle Apex can, if you follow the advice in this article, do the hard work for you.
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In the average IT department, geek-credibility is bound up with the number of monitors you are simultaneously using. What about going one step further, and running them on several computers at once, with just one mouse and keyboard?… Read more
In any IT department, there is a certain geek-cool to having a whole range of monitors attached to your PC. The more, the geekier. OK, but are you really trying? In these straitened times, Surely it must be possible to harness old PCs and laptops into a huge display? Our intrepid expert Systems Engineer, Wesley "Nonapeptide" David, is dispatched to investigate the possibilities.
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Security requires defense in depth. The cleverest intrusion detection system, combined with the best antivirus, won't help you if a malicious person can gain physical access to your PC or server. A routine job, helping to remove a malware infection, brings it home to Wesley just how easy it is to get a command prompt with SYSTEM access on any PC, and inspires him to give a warning about the consequences.… Read more
Microsoft Office 365 is the hot new Cloud suite coming out of Redmond, but information about it is either hard to come by, or a little fragmented. We asked Brien to take a look, and boil it all down to the essentials that everyone, including non-technical managers, needs to know.… Read more
Wesley has heard High Availablity touted as all sorts of technological cure-all for busy SysAdmins and DBAs, and now he's taking a stand against it. There are a range of things that High Availability is regularly confused with (either deliberately or innocently), and Wesley's clearing it all up.… Read more
Wesley David has been doing a lot of thinking about what tools (both physical & virtual) every good SysAdmin should have on hand. He's shared some of those thoughts with us already, and now he rounds everything off with some more light-hearted necessities.… Read more
As an IT professional, you probably find it hard to communicate effectively with your less-than-technically-adept manager. Dr. Masha Petrova is determined to help you get your point across, and suggests 5 essential techniques that will get your documentation read.… Read more
Mailboxes moves happen all the time, and given how precious the data in mailboxes can be, you should know exactly how to monitor their progress and make sure they transition smoothly. You also need to know what happens when something goes wrong. Johan imparts the necessary skills.… Read more
A good SysAdmin needs the right tools, both virtual and physical. As a front-line consultant, Wesley David will be providing suggestions for both in the next few weeks, and here he discusses of the essential software tools that every SysAdmin should have on hand at a moment's notice.… Read more
The use of 'Social Networking' for your professional development is no longer just for the pioneers. If you aren't using social Media for your career, then you may be missing out. Dr Masha gives an overview, for the 'late adopters', of the opportunities out there . … Read more
Continuing her campaign for better technical presentations, Dr. Masha Petrova now provides simple yet fundamental guidance to becoming a great speaker, in 3 easy steps. She even lets us in on the secret ingredient of a fantastic presentation.… Read more
The so-called 'Blue Screen of Death' has inspired fear in the hearts of mere mortals, but Systems Administrators are expected be capable of casually beating back this sinister beast. So imagine Ben Lye's distress when he discovered that many aspiring SysAdmins had no structured approach to tackling the root of the problem. Setting out to remedy the situation, Ben lays out a simple 3-step plan, and dispenses some good advice.… Read more
Frustrated by technically interesting yet agonizing conferences, Dr. Masha Petrova leaves geeks with no excuses for making bad presentations, and begins her campaign ensure that the people with good ideas also have good presentation skills to back them up, and get them noticed.… Read more
With security concerns being a constant litany, it's worth considering Active Directory Rights Management Services as a powerful tool in your access-control arsenal, particularly when it integrates so neatly with Exchange 2010. Elie Bou Issa kindly takes us, step by step, through everything we need to know to install and start using this versatile technology like a pro.… Read more
Ben Lye uncovered a memory leak in the nonpaged pool which was crashing his servers with disquieting regularity. Luckily it was relatively easy to troubleshoot, and he's sharing the tools and techniques he used to get his servers back on track in double-quick time.… Read more
There are some skills which are extensions of your instincts, and which you can only learn though years of experience. Matt Simmons has this brought home by the fact that he was recently minutes away from a data-loss disaster, and he doesn't quite know how he prevented it.… Read more
Snapshots are a useful feature of Windows Server 2008. Taking a snapshot of Active Directory as a scheduled task can prove to be a wise precaution in case disaster strikes. Once they are mounted, they can be accessed by any LDAP tool which allows the user to specify a host name and port number. Ben Lye shows how you can restore attributes to a large numbers of broken distribution groups from a snapshot.… Read more
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