Please enjoy this week’s guest post about designing and/or revising your data center structure, written by Scott McQuarrie of EZWatch Pro.
Posts Tagged ‘data center’
Network Emulation and Monitoring: Call for Input
Good morning to all of our readers, and thank you for your time and attention here on our blog.
In the past year plus, we’ve covered a wide gamut of topics on The Network View. We’ve done a series about how to calculate an ROI (or cost savings, more like it) for simplifying the complexity of passive monitoring tools in the data center. We spent many weeks sharing insights from SPoTs (Security Pros on Twitter), many of whom you already knew, and a few who were very likely new folks to some of you. We shared some key players at a few security tool vendors in our ALIST series. And we’ve covered research, trends, 2010 predictions, and even some network emulation topics.
Data Center Staffs Need Relief in 2010
Symantec recently released their third annual 2010 State of the Data Center report, and there were some especially important findings in the area of data center staff productivity. We’ve been talking about this important topic for a long time, and this seems like an ideal time to review the key findings, translate exactly what they mean for data centers, and tie it all together.
Security and IT in 2010
Heading into the New Year, we have seen a slew of reviews for 2009 and previews of what various experts and pundits think will happen this year. On this very blog, we have even chimed in on several of the more interesting takes that we’ve seen out in the blogosphere and on the web itself. But what we haven’t done is give our take on where we think the big stories will come in 2010, so let’s attack that angle now.
In 2010, I predict we will see more of…
Predictions for 2010: Breaking Down IDC’s Take for Data Centers and Service Providers
Continuing our end of year review of the various predictions from IT and networking thought leaders, today we turn our attention to IDC. For those of us who have been in high tech since the early 90s (or longer), IDC is a well-known entity. I remember working with them directly back in my days of fab planning and market research at Advanced Micro Devices, and they always offered a spin that made me take pause when interpreting trends and new developments.
When Data Centers Collide – A Modern Fable Of A Lost Lunch
The following blog entry originally appeared on Spirent’s Broadband Blog earlier this week. As a partner of Anue Systems, Spirent has been gracious enough to share the content with us for posting here on The Network View.
Monitoring Optimization ROI Part VIII: Wrapup
Over the past several weeks, we have taken you through the three “pillars” upon which Monitoring Optimization is built: Network Visibility / Coverage, Tool Utilization, and Staff Productivity. We’ve also taken a deep dive into a hypothetical case study for Simson Confections. Let’s wrap it all up now and look at the total ROI for all three scenarios.
ROI for Optimizing Monitoring Staff Productivity (Case Study)
Simson has struggled for a couple of years to quantify the impact of lost productivity. Tradeoffs for staff priorities can lead to a gap in coverage, which is a secondary effect of stretching the network operations team too far. That said, for the purposes of this hypothetical example, we will assume they are not making tradeoffs between maintaining filters over time and troubleshooting, so we can isolate the productivity problem accurately.
Monitoring Optimization ROI Part IV: The Tools
Now we clearly understand why we need tools and how to use them to best cover the network. However, on the flip side, it is important to optimize the utilization of the tools themselves. Tools can range from “free” for open source (some debate whether free is free, or whether the cost is hidden elsewhere) to hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit. With such hefty investments of money and effort, particularly in tight economic and budgetary times, it is imperative to squeeze the most that you can out of those tools.
Monitoring Optimization ROI, Part II: The Network
The Network View is offering a series of ROI-related posts focused on the question: “Why optimize my network and/or security monitoring?” This is the second installment, which delves into the negative impacts of having incomplete coverage of your network.