Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

In today’s world, it isn’t always practical or possible to be on site to troubleshoot every network issue that pops up. Whether you’re under mandatory stay-at-home orders because of a global pandemic, in the middle of a surprise snowstorm, or sleeping cozy in your bed 60 miles away, being able to access remotely the network would make your life infinitely easier. With Auvik’s remote management features, it’s possible.

When you work in IT, there’s never a shortage of things to do. For folks who like to be busy, IT is a great place to be. But the workload can quickly become overwhelming, and it may often feel like you and your team are putting out fires and not productively working on other tasks that move the needle for your team or company. The trick is managing your team’s time effectively so the excessive pile of work gets done. These four time management strategies can help. Let’s get started.

Let’s be honest: As a network manager, you’re responsible for knowing a little bit about everything when it comes to computer networking. From fundamentals to anticipating future tech changes, there’s a lot of ground to cover. To keep up, you need to keep learning. If you’re wondering where to start, this list of 10 computer networking books can help.

In my previous article, I explained what syslog is and why it’s used. In this article, I’m digging into how to configure syslog on network devices. The explanations and examples will be a bit Cisco specific, mainly because that’s the gear I’m most familiar with. Essentially every modern network device has at least some syslog capabilities, though.

When it comes to cybersecurity, the landscape is constantly changing: the number of cyberattacks is always on the rise, the attacks themselves are becoming more sophisticated, and there’s a serious skills shortage in the industry. There’s a lot to learn about cybersecurity if you want to keep up and keep your users protected.

As a network evolves over time, new devices are added, old devices begin to show their age, and some devices are completely forgotten about. It’s a natural consequence of mergers, upgrades, staff turnovers, and other common occurrences that contribute to redundancy or excess complexity in IT infrastructure.

As the world braces for recession, you need your team in fighting shape to take on the economic challenges to come. An efficient use of resources while still maintaining high service standards is more important than ever. But that’s a tall order for IT leaders who may be managing a fully remote workforce for the first time. The processes and habits that worked to boost your team’s productivity while your direct reports all sat within earshot may not cut it when workers are remote.

For companies who can’t—or just don’t—host all of their information and applications in the public cloud, VPNs are a gateway to business-critical resources that employees need to do their jobs when they’re not in the office. Since we’re in the middle of a global pandemic, most of us can’t go into our offices. But bills still need to be paid, customers still need to be contacted, and internal resources like line of business applications need to be accessed.

In the new normal of the COVID-19 pandemic, a spare room is an office, a handshake is a threat, and a full shelf of toilet paper at the grocery store is nothing short of a miracle. In these unusual times, IT teams are stepping up and stepping outside their job description to help their users adapt to the shifting landscape in which we live and work.

In 2016, we wrote about the exponential value of computer networks and the importance of IT professionals as champions of the network, “doing their part to secure, maintain, and advance the engines that keep everything running.” Today, those words ring true in ways we could never have predicted four years ago.