Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a popular quote for a simple reason: Changes can lead to unexpected results. Many network engineers have learned this lesson the hard way. Stories of admins who update firmware or configurations only to have network problems begin are common. Even big names in networking have been hit by change-induced network failures.

State and local governments (SLG), the frontline for delivery of services much of the population rely on, face some difficult challenges when it comes to modernization of their IT networks. Among them, the tools and services being used are built on some seriously old legacy infrastructure.

It’s no surprise that monitoring and managing networks in the financial services industry is a complex task with plenty of challenges. In addition to the “standard” networking requirements, like high availability and traffic capacity planning, IT in the finance industry has to deal with regulatory and industry-specific challenges that create even more issues to deal with.

Smart devices are everywhere nowadays, from refrigerators and coffee makers to security cameras and thermostats. A significant percentage of these Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices are designed for consumers. However, they have also become a mainstay in various other fields, including healthcare, where their use has become prolific. The Internet-of-Medical-Things (IoMT) market has exploded in value, forecasted to reach approximately $158.1 billion by 2022, according to Deloitte.

When the internet was first developed, the IP addressing scheme was IPv4. This addressing scheme worked really well for about 25 years. After all, it had about 4 billion host addresses. But as the internet grew, we started to see that this was just not going to be enough. Now we have an entire infrastructure that was built on IPv4. While IPv5 addresses have been exhausted, we’ve used band-aid solutions to keep the internet growing.

The financial sector is in a constant state of change, and institutions must continually adjust to the evolving needs of their customers and the global marketplace. And with availability requirements like the ones European Banking Authority (EBA) provide—99.5%—financial institutions are driven to remain on the bleeding edge of responsiveness and convenience. Banking outages lead to lost consumer confidence and damaged reputations in a sector where trust is the cornerstone of doing business.

This article was born of necessity. Chatting with my editors at Auvik, I went looking to see what kinds of advice other sites had on SysAdmin tools you should have handy to do your job. Two things immediately struck me: Now don’t get me wrong, software is important to have. But what if you can’t access that device to use the software? What if there’s a (gasp!) physical issue that needs to be addressed, and you have to get some hands-on time with some racks?

As an IT pro, you’re probably used to doing the heavy lifting when it comes to network security. You might even find your team responsible for educating the rest of your company on best practices when it comes to network common security hacks and how to prevent them. Today, we’re here to lighten that load a little.

As an MSP owner or manager, you want your teams to be continually improving and increasing efficiency. To make that happen, you know you need to be tracking MSP KPIs—after all, what gets measured gets improved. But which numbers do you track, how many do you track, and how do you actually use them to get better?