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WindowsNetworking.com - Monthly Newsletter - February 2016Welcome to the WindowsNetworking.com newsletter by Debra Littlejohn Shinder, MVP. Each month we will bring you interesting and helpful information on the world of Windows Networking. We want to know what all *you* are interested in hearing about. Please send your suggestions for future newsletter content to: dshinder@windowsnetworking.com
1. Trickle Down Effect: Will a Stock Market Crash Cause your Network to Crash?PC World published an interesting article earlier this month about how the shaky stock market situation impacted Cisco’s business, and that made me start thinking about how the national and world economic state can affect all of us in the IT industry. Of course there is the obvious fear that a bad economy will lead to more companies downsizing and laying off employees, but there are also many more subtle ways in which a market downturn can send ripples through our work lives. With analysts at Fortune warning that we may be in for the biggest stock market crash in a generation, it’s hard not to be concerned about the potential effects on us and on the companies for which we work. Let’s talk a little about that big elephant in the room first. Once upon a time, if you worked for a big major corporation and you didn’t do something incredibly stupid – like embezzle company funds or sleep with the boss’s spouse – your position was usually pretty secure. In my dad’s day, it was common for employees to put in their thirty years or so and retire with their gold watch and even a nice pension. Those days are long gone, whether you’re in IT or some other field. By and large, the only folks getting pensions now are public sector workers and that’s assuming the entity doesn’t go bankrupt (the increasing commonality of which is attributed by some to those pensions). According to many sources, today the average worker changes jobs ten to fifteen times over a lifetime, spending five or fewer years in each job. Not so long ago, you rarely heard of layoffs in the technology sector, but there have been quite a few over the past few years. In 2014 we saw Microsoft say goodbye to 18,000 employees, Cisco eliminated 6000 jobs, Siemens Unify cut its personnel roster approximately in half, and HP cut more than 30,000. Then 2015 saw another massive layoff at HP and 7000 more jobs gone at Microsoft. Unfortunately, the worst may be yet to come, with at least one research firm predicting 333,000 layoffs in 2016 by tech companies such as EMC, VMware and IBM. This month, Yahoo began cutting jobs, with more than 1500 expected as part of CEO Marissa Mayer’s desperate effort to stop the corporate bleeding and turn the company around as she and the board continue to be at odds over the sale of Yahoo’s core business. The prospect of layoffs is always a scary thing to employees, and some tech companies seem to handle the always-uncomfortable process in the worst possible ways. While using euphemisms such as “corporate outplacing,” “offboarding,” “rightsizing,” “reductions in force,” and the particularly disingenuous “rebalancing the level of human capital,” many of the big companies seem to be either sadistic or clueless as they announce impending layoffs weeks or months in advance and keep thousands of employees stressed and worried (and consequently less productive and less loyal) as they anxiously wait to find out whether their own jobs are on the chopping block. Even if your position is secure, though, an economic downturn and/or market crash can have a negative impact on the working environment and how well you’re able to get your work done. During volatile times, both individuals and organizations have a tendency to get conservative about spending and be wary about taking risks. That can translate to fewer raises, smaller or no bonuses, and less money invested in equipment and upgrading the network. Not all the news is bad, though. 247wallst.com just published an article on how a Deutsche Bank research report predicts big growth in some networking stocks in 2016, and in 2015, as Canada’s economy slumped, the tech sector continued to be a bright spot. One thing is certain: the IT industry has always been in a constant state of flux and change, so most of us who have been in the game for a while have learned to be adaptable. That’s a quality that comes in very handy in uncertain economic times. Another certainty is that – short of a world-wide EMP (electromagnetic pulse) that wipes out all the chips powering our systems and gadgets – computers and networks aren’t going away; they’re going to become even more ubiquitous. That means there will always be a need for people to keep them running and keep them secure. And that’s you and me. If the pessimists are right, there may be some tough times ahead, but we in the IT industry are in a better position than most, and for that we should be thankful. ‘Til next time, dshinder@windowsnetworking.com ======================= Quotes of the Month One of the funny things about the stock market is that every time one person buys, another sells, and both think they are astute. – William Feather The difference between playing the stock market and the horses is that one of the horses must win. – Joey Adams ======================= WindowsNetworking.com kicks of a new series of expert interviews.Join us on WindowsNetworking.com as we kick off our new series of expert interviews with IT insiders and tech gurus conducted by MVP Mitch Tulloch. Our first interview series is with Johan Arwidmark Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, and Mikael Nyström Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management. They will be discussing:
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2. Windows Server 2012 Security from End to Edge and Beyond – Order Today!
3. WindowsNetworking.com Articles of InterestThis month on WindowsNetworking.com, we introduce a pair of brand new articles from Mitch Tulloch and continue with new installments for three other popular article series. Associating a domain name with an Azure web site The Web Apps feature of the Microsoft Azure public cloud lets you create and deploy web and mobile apps that can scale with the growing needs of your business or organization. Web Apps was formerly called the Websites service and is now branded as a feature within the Azure App Service. But once you've created your web application, you may want to associate it with a domain name that your company or organization owns. This article from Mitch Tulloch walks you through the steps of associating your own domain with a website you have created using the App Service of Microsoft Azure. Migrating DNS Servers from Linux to Windows (Part 1) A properly functioning Domain Name Services (DNS) infrastructure is essential for Active Directory environments. The simplest way of course to set up DNS name servers with Active Directory is to install and configure the DNS Server role on your Windows Server domain controllers. For various reasons however, some organizations already have deployed or may choose to deploy Linux name servers running the Berkeley Internet Name Daemon (BIND) implementation of DNS. This is the first article of a two-part series by Mitch Tulloch on migrating BIND name servers running Linux to Windows Server DNS servers. PowerShell for Storage and File System Management (Part 8) How to successfully create a Hyper-V cluster using Virtual Machine Manager (Part 9) Since the overall purpose of creating a Hyper-V cluster is to make virtual machines highly available, in this installment of his ongoing series Nirmal Sharma will be explaining how you can deploy virtual machines to a Hyper-V cluster. Although you can use the Failover Cluster Manager snap-in or PowerShell cmdlets to make virtual machines highly available, deploying a virtual machine to a Hyper-V cluster via VMM is easy. In this part, Nirmal will talk about the process involved in making a virtual machine highly available on a Hyper-V cluster via VMM console. Amazon WorkSpaces: Your Desktop in the AWS Cloud (Part 3) In Part 1 of this series, I provided an overview of the need for persistent desktops in the cloud, the differences between the two ways to implement that – VDI and DaaS – and some of the concerns and issues surrounding Desktop as a Service. Then I began to delve into Amazon’s WorkSpaces desktop service and as we continue the discussion, I’ll take a look at various aspects of how it works, what it costs and how to deploy and use it. Then in Part 2 I delved into an examination of the different plans, licensing issues, and provisioning for AWS WorkSpaces. Now in the third installment, I talk about some other factors that are important in selecting a DaaS provider, including security considerations. 4. Administrator KB Tip of the MonthThis month we offer up a tip on how you can keep malware out of your small business network. This tip comes from reader Tony Gore who works at Aspen Enterprises in the UK: NETGEAR makes a range of devices for keeping malware out of your environment, with the UTM5 being the smallest and cheapest. Without subscriptions it is around $250 and the subscriptions are about $120 per year. There are three subscriptions available -- the AV, antispam and URL. The URL blocking is impressive -- sometimes a few pages browsing Google can result in a few hundred blocked URLs. It is pretty good at protecting you from drive-by downloads: As an aside, there is no "per user" licensing of the protection, so for low use, large user networks it can be very cost effective. It is also a decent idea for cheap and easy protection of a "guest" network. For personal use, Sophos offers a free UTM software to put on an old PC: The above tip was previously published in an issue of WServerNews, a weekly newsletter from TechGenix that focuses on the administration, management and security of the Windows Server platform in particular and cloud solutions in general. Subscribe to WServerNews today by going to http://www.wservernews.com/subscribe.htm and join almost 100,000 other IT professionals around the world who read our newsletter!
5. Windows Networking Links of the MonthNetworking company name change madness is upon us (again) Asus, TP-Link and D-Link on how the networking market has evolved Current P2P trends threatening enterprise security Containers vs. VMs: It comes down to state management, networking and sprawl Software Defined Networking: Is it improving or complicating IT? Is there a new networking solutions provider du jour for cloud architects? 6. Ask Sgt. DebDo I need to get on the DevOps bandwagon? QUESTION: I keep hearing that DevOps is the big thing in IT now and I know you’ve mentioned it before in the newsletter and in your articles but I guess I’m still not completely clear on what it really means. It seems like just another one of those buzzwords that pops up every now and then to describe the same old ideas that have been around for ages. Obviously it’s part of this whole “agile” thing but does it mean anything to me as an IT pro or is it only relevant to programmers? I just want to know whether I should be spending time and money educating myself in this. – Charles K.ANSWER: Hi, Charles. You’re certainly right that DevOps (created by combining “development” or “developer” and “operations”) is being pushed as the latest “movement” within the industry, and you’re also right on target that it came along on the coattails of the agile manifesto and the new way of doing things that grew out of that. The technology field has long been divided into two groups: developers (programmers) and IT pros (operational personnel). Not infrequently, the two have been at odds in terms of priorities and focus, and there has been more than a little sibling rivalry from time to time. For instance, during Steve Ballmer’s tenure at Microsoft, some IT pros weren’t feeling the love in the midst of his enthusiastic rallying cry for “developers, developers, developers.” DevOps is about creating an environment where devs and IT pros communicate better and work together more closely, and in fact some organizations have taken it further and expect their staffs to be cross trained in both skill sets, similarly to those municipalities that have adopted a public safety model whereby their police officers are also certified firefighters/paramedics and vice versa. The idea behind this is that it streamlines the software development and deployment and administration processes to make it faster and more reliable. Better quality assurance is a big part of it, but when implemented as intended, it involves a much broad scope that encompasses a change in the corporate culture. Short answer, then, is yes – you, as an IT pro, definitely should acquaint yourself with the DevOps model and perhaps even dip your toe into the programming waters, if you want to make yourself as marketable as possible in today’s rapidly moving tech world.
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