Evaluate

IT compliance and governance strategies

• Get to know SIEM software basics and benefits

  Security information and event management tools give organizations enhanced network management functionality, such as automatic reporting, data stream analysis and anomaly detection. Continue Reading

• Five questions to guide a cloud vs. on premises debate

  Don't blindly jump on the cloud bandwagon. Before you move a workload to cloud vs. on premises, ask yourself these five questions, and prevent a complicated reverse migration. Continue Reading

• Get to know ASHRAE 90.4, the new energy efficiency standard

  ASHRAE recently released its new 90.4 energy efficiency standard. Here's how it differs from 90.1, and what data center managers need to know. Continue Reading

• IT certification programs to get in-demand skills for 2016

  IT certification programs offer important skills for evolving technological needs. Data center pros will find a lot of clouds on the skills horizon, and can get these certifications to excel. Continue Reading

• The new IT security threat coming to your data center

  The latest and greatest in technology opens new opportunities for hackers to penetrate sensitive corporate data. Continue Reading

• Server energy efficiency benchmark takes holistic view

  Benchmarks from the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation show your server energy efficiency.Continue Reading

• Uptime certification misuse leads to big changes

  The Uptime Institute's tier-level certification will now only be handed out to constructed projects that meet the standards, not for designs.Continue Reading

• Improve data center energy management with this guide

  The revised 2015 version of the E.U.'s best practices guide for data centers provides up-to-date tips on data center energy management for everyone.Continue Reading

• Is CEEDA a better energy-efficiency certification than ISO 50001?

  Are there reasons that I would select CEEDA certification versus ISO 50001 certification to show that the data center is energy efficient?Continue Reading

• What can I expect from data center infrastructure management tools?

  Should facilities and IT teams agree on one cohesive DCIM tool for everything in the data center? Are DCIM vendors offering that?Continue Reading

• What HTTP/2 means to the data center and its security

  A new hypertext protocol promises better performance for complex and demanding websites.Continue Reading

• TIA standards, new ideas shape data center cabling

  TIA data center standards address cabling systems with performance, budget and future plans in mind. New concepts bear consideration as well.Continue Reading

• How does an Open-IX data center cert stack up to Uptime Tiers?

  The Open-IX data center certification aims at resiliency through self-declared certification and an annual renewal process, rather than proprietary oversight.Continue Reading

• Five new IT metrics fill the gaps in data center tracking

  Traditional data center metrics don't follow the "no man left behind" rule. Gaps in IT metrics let some costs fall by the wayside.Continue Reading

• How do you define data center size, density?

  With shifts in the scale and density of data centers, one industry organization is drawing up ways to standardize how we talk about data center size and power needs.Continue Reading

• A data center checklist for facility design and IT ops

  Choose the right data center provider or facility now, and prevent costly errors and inadequate services later.Continue Reading

• COBOL compilers improve big data, OLTP applications

  Application development tools optimize code only so much. For the most efficient code on intense apps, a COBOL compiler is still the go-to tool.Continue Reading

• Is an OpenFlow switch the only option for SDN?

  Our network team wants to start implementing software-defined networking. Do we need to use an OpenFlow switch? Are there other SDN switch options?Continue Reading

• Uptime's guide to data center assessment and optimization

  Even the best data center design drifts from its opening day to the present. Uptime shares its recommendations to map cooling power to today's IT load.Continue Reading

• A data center regulatory compliance primer

  Regulatory compliance puts rigorous and sometimes unclear demands on the data center. Here's how to approach regulations like SOX, HIPAA and PCI DSS.Continue Reading

• Why Facebook and the NSA love graph databases

  Graph databases play six degrees of separation to find real connections. See how IT teams can use the database approach for businesses.Continue Reading

• A data center design certification appraisal

  Data center design certification isn't always straightforward. Don't fall for self-certification; stick to Uptime and other reputable titles.Continue Reading

• What colocation customers should know about data center tiers

  Colo providers use data center tiers as a quick, recognizable way to market their facilities' reliability and uptime, but that isn't the whole story.Continue Reading

• Getting started with ITIL service management

  Promised cost savings, alignment with business, and operational efficiency are encouraging more organizations to take up ITIL service management.Continue Reading

• Modernizing the IT governance framework for fun and profit

  IT governance frameworks should protect the business, but they're often barriers to innovation. It's time to rethink governance mandates.Continue Reading

• Major changes in data center fire suppression standards NFPA 75 and 76

  Fire standard changes can add a lot of work and expense to a data center operator's job, but the updates to NFPA 75 and 76 address real safety risks.Continue Reading

• SATA Express marries PCI-e, SATA for faster direct-attached storage

  With the speed and power improvements introduced by SATA 3.2 specifications, SATA drives are making a comeback for direct-attached storage.Continue Reading

• Analyzing changes in IPv6 vs. IPv4 for data center networks

  Dual-stack network environments make things a lot more interesting, which is why you need to be ready for IPv6 today.Continue Reading

• Promising and misleading trends in data center power design

  Not all trends in data centers will benefit your specific data center, and this is certainly true in power design. Sometimes, vendor hype is to blame.Continue Reading

• Server benchmarking tools and stress testing

  Admins should turn to several tools to perform benchmark testing and compare results to verify accuracy. This tip outlines the role of stress testing and lists several tools available to engineers.Continue Reading

• Nagios notifications: Setting up alerts in the network monitoring tool

  In this tip on the open source network monitoring tool Nagios, learn how to set up custom configurations that can send Nagios notifications to admins at any time of the day.Continue Reading

• ITIL vets turn to SaaS-based tools to ease upgrade hell

  Implementing or upgrading an IT service management suite can be a nightmare, but these ITIL veterans have turned to IT management using Software as a Service.Continue Reading

• Data center efficiency tools, services litter the landscape

  Energy-efficiency tools are supposed to help data centers understand that energy efficiency frees resources for compute-intensive activities and reduces costs. But do they?Continue Reading

• Change management tools become more comprehensive with ITIL v3

  Change management tool releases from Tripwire and Solidcore Systems signal a shift toward more comprehensive approaches to change management.Continue Reading