A few weeks ago, my colleague John O’Boyle posted that there is no end to endpoint management. That’s no secret to system administrators who spend most of their time thinking about mobile device management, endpoint security, security patches…

Managing production application databases has become more demanding than ever before not only due to the complexity of the applications they support, but also the very small margins for performance slowdowns or outages.  Being proactive and resolving…

The backend repository for the Foglight Performance Investigator is based on Infobright, an analytics engine for machine generated data. However, you can connect natively via anything that can connect to PostgreSQL.

The schema reference for Performance…

Can Foglight run on a Raspberry Pi running Linux? This blog answers the question.

Interestingly, I've been asked more than once recently if the Foglight Agent Manager can be installed on a Raspberry Pi (version 3) running Raspbian. One of the main use…

As the old saying goes, “the one constant in life is change”, and this is especially true in database environments.  There are many reasons why database environments experience change whether it be through typical maintenance efforts such…

In my last post, I covered the four stages of capacity management, and talked about some of the reasons why managing your virtual capacity is equally as important as physical capacity management.  Now it’s time to talk specifically about how we can help…

The need for virtual capacity management is on the rise.  In Gartner’s ‘Market Guide for Capacity Management Tools’ report, published on January 30, 2015, it states “Through 2018, more than 30 percent of enterprises will use IT infrastructure capacity…

Office 365 has three types of identity models for sign-in: cloud, synchronized, and federated.  Cloud is the simplest, where users sign on directly.  With synchronized sign-in, users are passed through a directory syncing tool and validated.  Active Directory…

This second blog in a series on the impact of GDPR on IT operations examines the IT requirements specified in or implied by the new regulation.

There are three main areas that IT operations must focus on in order to facilitate an organisation's compliance…

In this blog series, I’ll cover why monitoring the Internet of Things (IoT) is important, along with how to go about doing it in a practical manner.

What is the Internet of Things?

The IoT is an ecosystem where sensors, devices and equipment are…

Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise’s console does a wonderful job of providing insights into problems occurring in your environment. What I find interesting is that many users of this solution do not know that you have the ability to add automation. Automation…

Malware — malicious software designed to disrupt computer operations, gather sensitive information, or gain access to private computer systems — is a serious and increasing security concern.  Organizations and individuals alike must battle…

Dickens wrote “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness….”…

Storage Groups: Your Next Data Protection Bullet

OK – so you may now have an awesome data deduplication appliance in your environment.  Using it gives you the peace of mind that data can be quickly backed up and recovered.  But what about going further…

The requirements for data protection continue to evolve with the changing IT environment as well as the need to protect an increasing amount of data. 

My experience in the area of data protection began in the late 1980’s when the only option for data…

You’re smart, we know it! Our customers are intelligent people, our employees are intelligent people, and together we are one smart organization made up of internal and external minds.

How do we manage that knowledge and what is Knowledge Management…

Life is about making decisions. Every decision will start with a simple question and assessing the options. What will I wear today? Will I travel by car or by train for my meeting this morning? Simple questions with potentially, a massive impact. You…

When installing SharePlex one of the things you need to do is verify the installation is working by using the SharePlex test tables before using your own tables. 

There are a couple of scripts you can run to do this but in the video I recorded I show you…

DevOps has been pervasive within Application Development for several years, but the database environment is so different and sensitive in nature, making database development a barrier to an end-to-end DevOps strategy.

The most important element of DevOps…

In Investigating Processes with Foglight - Part 1, we looked at the default dashboards that give us insight into processes and their performance metrics on a host.

A customer wanted a simple dashboard to display metrics on a specific process, without…

I was recently asked by a colleague if Foglight had any ability to tell if a specified port is open on a host.

I dug through my archives of custom agents that have been developed over the years, and I found one called PortMonitor (attached version 1.1…

In a world where data availability and integrity are paramount to the success of an organization, IT administrators are always looking for the best way to secure their data and keep the business running. One essential component of this strategy is backup…

“The most significant business benefit of DevOps is faster delivery of features.”

If most of the people you asked about DevOps told you that, wouldn’t it be worth a try?

Think of how much innovation DevOps adoption could introduce to…

Our data and systems are frequently under attack these days.  A more traditional attack is from external threats like viruses or hackers trying to gain access from outside of your environment.  Threats from inside your environment are on the increase though…

IT professionals today have a great deal on their plate. They are responsible for servers, applications, storage, networking, security, etc. Throw in a Cloud initiative, BYOD, managing a diverse array of endpoints like smartphones and its easy to see…