06Mar2017
02Mar2017
It’s all about your downtime tolerance
Before you go picking the cheapest possible IT solution that meets your business requirements, or on the other side of the equation, adding unnecessary complexity to your network, you first need to consider: What is your downtime tolerance? If you don't answer this critical question, you might end up with...
23Feb2017
Benefits to keeping an On-Premises Active Directory Domain
I have seen an alarming trend in the small business market--as more and more companies offload their IT infrastructure to cloud-based applications and services (which is great in many cases), many of them are also starting to abandon older tools and platforms such as on-premises Active Directory. This I cannot agree...
16Feb2017
Hyper-V Failover Cluster: Basic Setup
I have previously shared a slightly more complex method for configuring a simple 2-node failover cluster, involving a converged Hyper-V virtual switch, with QoS policies and so forth to manage traffic on the Management, CSV and Live Migration networks. However, there is another config I wanted to share, which in some cases...
09Feb2017
CRUD: When to use Create, Replace, Update or Delete in Group Policy Preferences?
I have to admit: I don't use Group Policy Preferences as much as I probably should. Historically, when I migrate clients from a legacy system such as Windows Server 2003 or 2008 to something newer, I tended to leave well enough alone, so to speak, and just update existing logon scripts, batch files...
02Feb2017
The Four Causes of Technology
Aristotle, in his work The Metaphysics, enumerates a number of “causes” which describe the essence of a thing. Your business’s technology is a thing. If we want to gain a good understanding of what this thing is, then we should be able to describe this thing--in its essence--we should be able to...
26Jan2017
How to prepare for a HIPAA technical risk assessment or audit
I have had to help a number of smaller-sized health services clinics with this kind of thing recently, so I figured a place to collect notes on these experiences was in order. Hopefully others will find it valuable; just know that there is no such thing as "HIPAA compliant"--no auditor...
19Jan2017
FAQ: Office 365 Exchange Online Hybrid Migrations
I think I get more traffic and questions about this topic than just about any other. A lot of people send in comments or contact requests asking about things that I know I have already written about. But, apparently I haven't done a good job of capturing this information in...
12Jan2017
How to: Express Migration to Office 365 Exchange Online
For a long time, I have been advocating for hybrid style migrations from Exchange On-premises to Exchange Online with Office 365, regardless of whether you are a small, medium or larger-sized enterprise. The reason being, it is a much better end user experience, and does not require manual reconfiguration of...
07Jan2017