Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

June 2022

What to look for in a Windows network monitoring tool

Monitoring the Windows devices in a network is difficult yet essential since the devices are tasked with the critical functioning of the network. The challenges and complexity increase multi-fold for an enterprise network because each device is associated with many events, services, and processes that must be monitored to ensure the hassle-free operation of both the devices and the network. The devices should be monitored constantly by a network monitoring tool.

How to monitor nginx in Kubernetes with Prometheus

nginx is an open source web server often used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, and web cache. Designed for high loads of concurrent connections, it’s fast, versatile, reliable, and most importantly, very light on resources. In this article, you’ll learn how to monitor nginx in Kubernetes with Prometheus, and also how to troubleshoot different issues related to latency, saturation, etc.

Centralized Log Management for Network Monitoring

It’s been a long few years for your IT department. In the span of one month, you had to make sure that all employees and contractors could work remotely. This meant giving everyone access to all cloud resources and ensuring uptime. Then, you needed to start securing access. Now, you need to shore up all your security as the phrase “zero trust architecture” has recently entered conversations with leadership.

Network Basics: What Is SNMP and How Does It Work?

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a way for different devices on a network to share information with one another. It allows devices to communicate even if the devices are different hardware and run different software. And despite any rumors you may hear, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

The Keys to Understanding Network Visibility from the End-User Perspective

The core network paths today’s applications take primarily live outside of IT’s control and sight, even though the burden of fixing these paths still resides with network operations. Understanding the dynamic delivery paths is critical to being able to drive successful digital transformation across the enterprise. Without this insight, there is significant risk to end-user experience, IT efficiency and the ability to support an increasingly remote workforce.

How to Locate a Device Using a MAC Address

Every device on a network has a unique address called IP address, which helps identify the device and enables other devices to communicate with it. “IP” stands for Internet Protocol. The purpose of an IP address is to handle the connection between devices that send and receive information across a network. Without an IP there is no way to establish that connection. Each IP address is a series of characters, such as “192.168.1.1”.

Financial Impact of an Outage

In October 2021, the world’s largest social media platform suffered a massive worldwide outage affecting billions of customers. Facebook has a monthly active user base of 2.8 billion users, which increases to 3.5 billion when you include its subsidiaries such as Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus. The platform succumbed to a “Gigalapse,” which happens when a server can’t adequately respond to excessive demand.

The Auvik Network Device Buyer's Guide

Buying the right network devices is an essential part of network design, and can have an impact throughout the network lifecycle. Get it right, and your network is high-performing, easy to troubleshoot, and reliable. Get it wrong, and downtime, complexity, and costs add up fast. A network device buyer’s guide would probably be really helpful. So we made you one.

K-12 and Network Monitoring: Solving IT Mysteries, Meeting Challenges

To say that K-12 school systems have challenges is an understatement. COVID forced schools to make a dramatic turn towards remote learning, which meant the network was anything but insular, forcing IT to efficiently support thousands of new remote endpoints. That is on top of other K-12 network challenges. Issue number one: tight budgets. Most school systems are tight for cash, especially after the financial stresses of COVID and all the millions spent on PPE.

Common interoperability challenges for multi-cloud

As cloud technology has matured, hybrid and multi-cloud approaches have become commonplace. Enterprises have discovered that not all applications are suitable for the public cloud, meaning on-premise data centres are still active, and each public cloud has its own strengths and weaknesses, driving businesses to mix-and-match to suit their needs. This results in interoperability challenges for multi-cloud environments.

Gzip Compression for Faster Web Pages (Apache, Nginx, WordPress)

Even reducing the loading time of our website by a second can have a drastic impact on the traffic we get. It is vital for our websites to load quickly in this fast-moving world, where all the information we need can be found within a blink of an eye. One way to achieve it is using Gzip compression. The Gzip algorithm compresses and decompresses data in order to make websites load faster in a client's machine.

Network Configuration Management: The Benefits & Importance

Configuration management is one of those network management topics people often neglect. It’s not very exciting—but it’s incredibly important. Administrators rely on network configuration management in a variety of circumstances. Let’s discuss what network configuration is, delve further into the importance of network configuration, and explore the benefits of configuration management.

Kentik moves up the stack with Synthetic Transaction Monitoring

In our quest to provide the leading network observability solution, Kentik has been focused on developing a service for NetOps teams that empowers them to have intimate knowledge of their network traffic and the devices that route traffic. Our service helps them plan capacity, project costs, optimize routes, detect unwanted traffic, troubleshoot issues and analyze events.

Securing the Software Development Build

Tim Brown, SolarWind CISO and VP, Security, explains how SolarWinds is ensuring the integrity of the build process and how we share learnings with our partners, community, and customers; as well as how we're leveraging and contributing to open-source initiatives and lead by example in securing the supply chain.

Problem solving and pinball with Jay Adelson | Network AF Episode 18

Chairman and Co-Founder of Scorbit, Jay Adelson, sits down with Network AF host Avi Freedman to talk about his history as a serial entrepreneur. Jay founded Equinix, Revision3, Opsmatic, and was the CEO of Digg. Throughout the conversation Jay and Avi touch on problems founders encounter, and discuss their mutual joy for gaming.Highlights of the conversation include.

All You Need To Know About Multi-Cloud Security

A recent study from Juniper Research predicts the value of enterprise cybersecurity spend will continue to climb, exceeding $226 billion in 2027; up from $179 billion in 2022. This growth of 26% over the next five years reflects a rising awareness of vulnerabilities, not least of which is DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) as a key driver behind the increasing spend.

Observation Is More than Monitoring | Discovering Observability: Session 2

You’re ready to take the leap and move your existing Orion Platform infrastructure to Hybrid Cloud Observability, but we know you’ll have questions. So, we’ve put together some people who can answer these questions in a way that’s easily digestible for current Orion Platform users.

How to Design a Network: 6 Best Practices for Success

A network provides a way for many computers to all be connected and exchange data with each other simultaneously. It allows members of organizations to quickly complete tasks, share information, and carry out any computing responsibilities that rely on a working network. It’s important for each organization to ensure that their network design is suitable for their needs.

Network Configuration, Monitoring and Management Explained

Network configuration entails setting up your network to support local or remote network communication. This configuration allows for wired or wireless connection and entails the installation of network hardware, software, and devices. In this article, let’s take a look at network configuration, including the benefits, various types and tools, and how to monitor and manage the network.

All About the SNMPwalk: What It Is, How to Run It

As we know, asset management is one of the crucial elements in IT service management. To deliver services consistently and ensure a high quality of services, it is important to keep the devices and the IT infrastructure running smoothly. Failures in critical devices can cause costly service disruptions and therefore it is important to constantly monitor device parameters and maintain them regularly.

Latest Updates in the HAProxy Data Plane API - Chad Lavoie - HAProxyConf 2021

The HAProxy Data Plane API now has the ability to get backends from AWS tags and Consul, upload SSL certificates, and other features that make it fit into modern configurations. In this presentation we will provide a brief introduction to the HAProxy Data Plane API and cover some of these new features in more depth.

Fostering Fearlessness: Working in the Middle of the Day Instead of the Middle of the Night

There’s no shortage of articles on CI/CD and how to run a configuration validation utility before reloading or restarting a service, but this type of validation is not the same as acceptance testing. Furthermore, these validations don’t always give you (or your leadership team) the confidence to allow you to make big changes to your Production Infrastructure during normal business hours, often preferring to err on the side of caution and scheduling a maintenance window when you might prefer to be in bed.

Annual Study: Hybrid IT Acceleration Has Increased Network Complexity and Lowered Tech Pros' Network Management Confidence

SolarWinds IT Trends Report 2022-Getting IT Right: Managing Hybrid IT Complexity examines the current state and areas of opportunity for technology professionals managing increased complexity as hybrid IT accelerates. The continued shift to hybrid IT drives increased levels of IT management complexity, but tech pros feel a lack of confidence in how to best manage it. Nearly half (44%) of tech pros said their organization manages hybrid IT complexity through training staff and adopting IT monitoring/management tools (37%)

Monitor and diagnose network performance issues with SNMP Traps

Monitoring your on-premise or hybrid infrastructure means keeping track of potentially thousands of devices, any one of which could be a point of failure. Additionally, silos between application and network teams can create visibility gaps that complicate troubleshooting. For network engineers investigating bottlenecks, being able to view real-time infrastructure health and performance data alongside application metrics is essential for ensuring their organizations meet key SLOs.

Outage in Egypt impacted AWS, GCP and Azure interregional connectivity

On Tuesday, June 7, internet users in numerous countries from East Africa to the Middle East to South Asia experienced an hours-long degradation in service due to an outage at one of the internet’s most critical chokepoints: Egypt. Beginning at approximately 12:25 UTC, multiple submarine cables connecting Europe and Asia experienced outages lasting over four hours. As I show below, the impacts were visible in various types of internet measurement data to the affected countries.

Custom Resources with HAProxy Kubernetes Ingress Controller

HAProxy Kubernetes Ingress Controller provides custom resources named Backend, Defaults, and Global that let you manage ingress controller settings more efficiently. To start using them right away, check the documentation for steps and examples. In this blog post, you’ll learn why custom resources are such a powerful feature and see tips for getting the most out of them.

Optimizing Images for Web Performance with NGINX

Images are a constant source of pain when developing websites. There are many formats and resolutions a developer must consider in order to maximize web performance. You’ll often end up with a cartesian explosion of the same image in different sizes and formats to support different scenarios. For example, you don’t want to send a high res image meant for high DPI screens to a low DPI screen - you’d be wasting bandwidth and burning time. Using the right file format is equally important.

Optimize Continuous Delivery of Micro-Services Applications with Continuous Performance Testing

I often hear from customers who complain about how “classic” performance testing (i.e., end-to-end testing with high volume of virtual users) of their applications before release slows down the cycle time by several weeks. In addition, the testing significantly consumes both people and infrastructure (hardware and software license) resources.

How to Test for Packet Loss: A Complete Guide

Among all the inconveniences endemic to living in the 21st century, there are few as common as a faulty internet connection. Most everyone with internet access is familiar with the experience but perhaps less so with the reason why. There are several, but chief among them is packet loss. In this article, we’ll explore what packet loss is and show you some of the first steps to conducting a packet loss test. But first, let’s briefly review what a packet is.

What is SCP Protocol? A Complete Guide

When transferring data between systems, it's extremely important to preserve integrity and confidentiality. There are protocols and procedures to do so. One of them is the Secure Copy Protocol (SCP); which is a method designed to securely pass on digital information. The SCP protocol helps transferring files from a local to a remote host or between two remote hosts.

Find out how to check my ping and the best way to check ping speed

Many users are familiar with the concept of network ping. Especially those who like online games. If you are having connection problems, the most reliable way to check it is to use the "ping" command. But not everyone can answer what a ping really is. In simple words, it is a measure of the time it takes for a network request to get from user to server and back.

IP Blacklisting: Your Beginner's Guide

IP Blacklists contain ranges of or individual IP addresses ‌you want to block. A blacklist can be used in combination with firewalls, intrusion prevention systems (IPS), and other traffic filtering tools. With the recent developments in cyber security, organizations are increasingly relying on IP blacklisting to protect their networks.

Anatomy of a Supply Chain Attack Detection and Response

In today's world of global supply chains, a breach never stops at a supplier level but cascades all the way up the chain. So being able to detect and stop a supply chain attack at an early stage before an attacker exfiltrates confidential company data or damages company operations and reputation is critical to your organization's survival. Luckily, hackers always leave a trace, so proper detection can help you stop breaches at an early stage before hackers achieve their goals.

What Are Preload Resource Hints?

Preloads are a powerful optimization technique that can make significant improvements to crucial performance metrics such as Core Web Vitals. I have written on prefetching a DNS lookup or even preconnecting to a domain. Preloading is a much more powerful extension of these concepts because it enables you to download entire resources in advance. In this article, let’s look at.

What is SD-WAN

SD-WAN is software to help manage the WAN. It makes the management and operation of a WAN by decoupling the networking hardware from its control mechanism and making it more straightforward. SD-WAN is a transformative technology used to simplify IT infrastructure management through a virtual WAN architecture that securely connects users to their applications. To understand SD-WAN, we should start with the traditional WAN.

CDN Log Analysis

Since the beginning of the Internet, the speed of delivering content has been an issue. While processor enhancements, network acceleration, and web frameworks have brought drastic improvements to performance, the goalposts have continued to shift further away; devices operate on wireless connections with limited bandwidth, and the Internet is accessed from every corner of the globe.

Is it Time to Retire Your VPN?

VPNs: not just sponsors of YouTube tech videos! If you think of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) as data privacy tools or a way to access geographically restricted content, then the idea they’re dying out probably seems far-fetched. But if we’re talking about internet-based VPNs, the kind that enables access to corporate networks, there’s been plenty of prognostication that the last days of VPN may be upon us.

5 Ways An SDI Platform Can Improve The Performance Of Your Applications

Improving the performance of applications and workloads that employees and customers engage with can have direct benefits to an organisation’s productivity and profit. In this blog we look at 5 ways that an SDI platform which offers private connectivity can help IT teams streamline networking activities and navigate performance challenges very quickly.

Solving slow web applications - Kentik Synthetics Page Load Test

Kentik's Phil Gervasi talks with Product Manager Sunil Kodiyan to discuss what synthetic testing is and how it can be used to troubleshoot issues with web applications. Sunil demonstrates the use of the Kentik Synthetics Page Load test, which provides a granular breakdown of how every component on the page is loading. Using that information, web app developers can easily track down exactly what’s impacting a site’s performance—whether it’s a site hosted on-premises, in the cloud, or by a SaaS provider.

Solving slow web applications with the Kentik Page Load test

Kentik Synthetics is all about proactive monitoring. With synthetic monitoring, you can investigate users’ digital experience by peeling back, layer by layer, exactly what’s going on in every aspect of the digital experience from the network layer all the way to application. Because synthetic tests can be so granular, the results provide different information than you can get from flows, streaming telemetry or other observability data.

See How Restorepoint Helps You Remediate After a Network Breach

This is our first blog in a three-part series, where we demonstrate the many features and benefits of using Restorepoint and the ScienceLogic SL1 Platform together. Today’s demo takes you through a network breach scenario—showing how to identify and remediate following an unplanned network device change.

What the Heck is Network Observability Anyway?

When it comes to monitoring and specifically IT Operations Monitoring (ITOM), everyone is saying monitoring is dead – you need observability. Vendors are jumping on the observability bandwagon. There’s a lot of noise about observability, network observability, full-stack observability and every other kind of observability you can imagine. This is a topic we have touched on in the past.

Announcing HAProxy Kubernetes Ingress Controller 1.8

We’re proud to announce the release of version 1.8 of the HAProxy Kubernetes Ingress Controller! In this release, we added support for full rootless mode, Prometheus metrics for the controller itself, and examples that are synchronized with our Helm chart. In this blog post, you will learn more about the changes in this version. Register for our webinar to learn more about this release.

Sponsored Post

3 Reasons You Need a Digital Experience Monitoring Solution

Exoprise customers are already enjoying the full benefits of 24*7 active monitoring for their enterprise applications. Don't believe us? Take a look at one of our case studies. While synthetic monitoring (aka Active Monitoring) is great for proactively detecting SaaS, network, and Internet outages, the IT world has now switched to Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) solutions. Thanks to Covid, that took the world by storm.

DX UIM Team Practices DevSecOps for Secure Development, Delivery, and Deployment

DevOps is a composition of enhanced engineering practices that reduce lead time and increase the frequency of delivery. The primary goal of DevOps is to ensure operations team members are engaged and collaborating with development from the very beginning of a project or product development. Within many enterprises, teams are being compelled to reassess the security of their DevOps implementations. Recent news on vulnerabilities like Sun Burst and Log4j underscore why this is so critical.

Identify Vulnerable Devices From Vendor Recalls and Security Notices

When network hardware vendors issue device recalls, field notices, or security alerts, the implication can be massive for MSPs. Take the 2017 clock signal issue, for example. That huge recall of Intel microchips was a large-scale vulnerability for tons of devices—and left MSPs scrambling to figure out which devices were affected on which client sites.