WindowsNetworking.com - Monthly Newsletter - September 2014
Hi Security World,
Welcome to the WindowsNetworking.com newsletter by Debra Littlejohn Shinder <http://www.windowsnetworking.com/Deb_Shinder/>, MVP. Each month we will bring you interesting and helpful information on the world of Windows Networking. We want to know what all *you* are interested in hearing about. Please send your suggestions for future newsletter content to: dshinder@windowsnetworking.com
1. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Network Admins
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Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, published in 1989, was a best-selling book by author Stephen Covey that continues to inspire readers to strive for excellence in their business and personal lives. Many of the general habits listed in the book â€" be proactive, put first things first, seek first to understand, then to be understood â€" are directly applicable to a network administrator’s job, but I’ve come up with some more specific habits that might help you to advance in your IT career.
1. Build a solid foundation. In the glory days of IT, in the 90s and early 2000s, many network admins were hired with minimal training and no real-world experience. Thanks to a tight supply-and-demand situation, I saw people take a few courses, pass a few certification exams, and walk into jobs that paid twice their previous salaries. Many of those people are no longer in the IT field. They were overwhelmed by job duties and employer expectations for which they weren’t really prepared. Some stuck it out, dug in and learned what they need to know through self-study, on-the-job training and trial and error. A few just got lucky, dodged the bullets and managed to keep plugging away without really knowing much about what they were doing, for years or even decades. They understand the “how to� but not the “why� of the technology they work with every day.
If you want to be effective and successful as an IT admin, you need to start with a solid foundation of knowledge and then build on it, just as a carpenter needs a solid foundation on which to build a house. If you manage to stumble into the job without that, all isn’t lost. Foundation repair companies can come in and make an unstable foundation strong again and you can shore up your knowledge and skills base after the fact, too â€" but in both cases it’s more difficult than starting out clean with a solid foundation.
2. Don’t be afraid of change. You know the old saw: Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine. In the IT world, it’s not just inevitable â€" it’s fast and furious. Don’t think that after you’ve built a foundation of knowledge and skills, you’re finished. Adding to that foundation work is actually a never-ending process. When a house becomes too small due to an expanding family, or you need more room for new hobbies or interests, one option is to move but another, often more cost-effective one, is to remodel and “add on.â€�
Some room additions can be carved out of existing space such as an attic or basement and some skills can be updated easily by learning about a new version of software or upgrading hardware. Other new rooms require that you pour a whole new foundation for them, and sometimes you have to learn entirely new skills about technologies you’ve never worked with before, technologies that might not have even existed a few years before. Adaptability is the key to maintaining peak effectiveness.
3. Learn to love loving to learn. With all these changes being thrown at you constantly, it helps if you love learning new things. Some of us are born naturally curious, but even if you weren’t, you can learn to love learning. The brain is like a muscle; the more you use it, the stronger it gets. And if you’ve ever embarked on a serious exercise problem, you know that even though you start out absolutely dreading each session on the treadmill or elliptical, after a while you start to enjoy it and even crave it if you have to skip a day for some reason. Learning can be addictive like that, too.
An important life lesson is that very often, simply “acting as if� can change your attitude and feelings. If you go into a new job feeling inadequate, but you “pretend� to be self-confident, it won’t be long before you’ll find that you’re no longer acting; the confidence is real. If you pretend to love learning new things, after a while you just might find that you really do.
4. Follow the money. This doesn’t mean what you might think it does. I’m not talking about making salaries and bonuses your primary focus. I’m talking here about becoming schooled in the financial aspects of the business. IT is no longer just about knowing how to keep a network up and running from the technical standpoint; it’s about doing it in the most cost-effective way. That means you need to turn some of that love of learning toward business finance.
A good understanding of such financial concepts as return on investment (ROI), total cost of ownership (TCO), Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR) and so forth and the ability to intelligently converse on these subjects will earn you the respect of higher-ups because you’re speaking their language. Broadening your horizons to encompass the financial side of IT is a part of the next habit:
5. Keep an eye on the big picture. It’s easy for overworked IT admins to narrow their focus. You have to get the job done, so you concentrate on the specific tasks that are necessary for that purpose â€" and nothing beyond. That used to be an acceptable way of doing things if you wanted to just remain in the same job forever and never advance in your career. Today, though, it’s a dangerous strategy.
IT is in a transitionary stage. Companies are downsizing on-premises datacenters and moving partially or completely to the cloud. Job security isn’t what it once was (if it ever was). More than ever, it’s important to keep your eye on the bigger picture of what’s going on in the company as a whole, not just in your little corner of the server room or datacenter. To be effective and successful, and prepared to take your career to the next level, you must be not just tech savvy but business savvy as well.
Show management that you aren’t just an easily replaceable cog in the IT wheel, but a valuable asset to the company regardless of the path it takes for attaining its IT goals.
6. Share the wealth (of knowledge). Sometimes, especially after being in a job for a long time, people get the idea that by hoarding their knowledge they can make themselves indispensable and ensure that they’ll never be laid off. After all, if you’re the only one who understands how the servers are configured and the network is laid out, they wouldn’t dare get rid of you, right? Of course, with modern options they could always just do away with the complex on-premises network altogether and just put it all in the cloud, making all your carefully cultivated secret knowledge useless. Oops.
Even in a more stable environment, keeping the important information all in your head is a bad idea. If nobody else can do your job, how are you ever going to move up to a better one? In fact, how are you even going to be able to take a vacation? It’s much better to share your wealth of knowledge by making sure there are diagrams, change logs and written documentation of everything (including admin passwords locked away in a safe that’s accessible only to trusted persons). If you got hit by a car tomorrow (heaven forbid) would you really want the whole place to descend into chaos and confusion?
7. Don’t just have a plan; have a strategy. To be effective means more than doing a good job every day. It also means achieving your career goals. You could cross your fingers and knock on wood and hope for the best, but if you really want to have a good chance of reaching those goals, you need to think ahead. The first step is obviously to know what those goals are. That requires developing a strategy for creating the conditions that will most likely get you there. Once you have a strategy, then you can develop a plan for carrying it out and think about the tactics you’ll use along the way.
The takeaway here is that “strategy� is not just a fancy word for planning; it’s actually the foundation on which you build your plan. The plan is what you follow to execute your strategy. Thinking strategically encompasses looking at the big picture, because a strategy involves not only determining where you are and where you want to end up, but also looks at different paths for getting there and why some are better. That means you have to define “better.� One path may be easier, another faster, another less costly, another less risky. Part of developing your strategy includes determining your priorities in order to then create the plan for reaching your end goal.
I hope this gives you some food for thought, as you strive to be more effective in your current position or in finding a new and better one.
'Til next time,
Deb
dshinder@windowsnetworking.com
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Quote of the Month - Formal education will make you a living, self education will make you a fortune. - Jim Rohn
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2. Windows Server 2012 Security from End to Edge and Beyond â€" Order Today!
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Windows Server 2012 Security from End to Edge and Beyond
By Thomas Shinder, Debra Littlejohn Shinder and Yuri Diogenes
From architecture to deployment, this book takes you through the steps for securing a Windows Server 2012-based enterprise network in today’s highly mobile, BYOD, cloud-centric computing world. Includes test lab guides for trying out solutions in a non-production environment.
Order your copy of Windows Server 2012 Security from End to Edge and Beyond. You'll be glad you did.
<http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Server-2012-Security-Beyond-ebook/dp/B00CMQK0OG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387293428&sr=8-1&keywords=windows+server+2012+end+to+edge+and+beyond>
3. WindowsNetworking.com Articles of Interest
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Working with the Desired State Configuration Feature
If your first reaction to the title of this article is “What’s that?� you probably aren’t alone. If you haven’t heard of the Desired State Configuration feature before, it may be because it’s something that not a lot of organizations use. That may be because the Desired State Configuration feature is based around PowerShell. There’s a little bit of work involved in getting it running, and the documentation for the tool can be a little bit intimidating. That being the case, many organizations choose to adopt third-party tools rather than delving into PowerShell. But if you’re feeling adventurous and want to check out this Windows utility, join Brien Posey for Part 1 of the journey:
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles-tutorials/windows-server-2012/working-desired-state-configuration-feature-part1.html
Performing Small Business Technology Assessments
Broad IT and general technology assessments within businesses and organizations are crucial. They can aid in documenting the network, identifying security vulnerabilities, and ensuring proper performance. Assessments can also help find ways in which technology can improve productivity and help the bottom line of an organization. For IT solution providers that support multiple organizations, assessments can be used to help in their sales process as well. In this article, Eric Geier explores the process of performing these assessments:
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles-tutorials/netgeneral/performing-small-business-technology-assessments.html
Storage Planning for Hyper-V Hosts (Part 5)
If you’ve been following Mitch Tulloch’s comprehensive series of articles that examine storage planning considerations for Windows Server 2012/2012 R2’s Hyper-V, you’ll be happy to know that Part 5 is now live on the web site, and it discusses the new Storage Migration feature that lets you move all of the files for a VM to a different location while the VM continues running. Check it out here:
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles-tutorials/windows-server-2012/storage-planning-hyper-v-hosts-part5.html
Troubleshooting Hyper-V Network Virtualization (Part 2)
Just can’t get enough of Hyper-V? It’s a pretty awesome technology â€" but as with all technologies, sometimes things go wrong. Nirmal Sharma continues the discussion of how misconfiguration can result in communication failures between virtual machines participating in Hyper-V network virtualization. Find out how to track down what the problem is with your Hyper-V deployment and how to fix it.
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles-tutorials/trouble/troubleshooting-hyper-v-network-virtualization-part2.html
Using PowerShell to Manage AD and AD Users
Windows PowerShell is an important tool to automate system and network administration tasks that otherwise would be too time consuming and tedious to execute. This article from Wilfredo Lanz reviews using PowerShell 4.0 to install Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), managing the AD PSDrive, and using the AD module for Windows PowerShell to administer AD users in a Windows Server 2012 R2 environment.
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles-tutorials/windows-server-2012/using-powershell-manage-ad-and-ad-users.html
4. Administrator KB Tip of the Month
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Troubleshooting iSCSI target discovery
A tip on steps you might take when your iSCSI target fails.
If your attempt to discover an iSCSI target fails, it is usually for one of the following reasons:
- The wrong target portal IP address or DNS name was configured on the initiator.
- The wrong IQN for the initiator was assigned when the target was created.
- There are problems with network connectivity between the initiator and target computers.
Troubleshooting the first issue is straightforward. To see if the second issue is the cause of the problem, try assigning IQN* as the target, which allows any initiator to connect to it. And, of course, you can troubleshoot the third issue using standard network troubleshooting procedures.
For more great admin tips, check out http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kbase/
5. Windows Networking Links of the Month
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What you need to know about the Gmail password compromise
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2605859/security0/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-gmail-password-compromise.html
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) grows in the data center
http://www.networkcomputing.com/storage/sas-grows-in-the-data-center/a/d-id/1315659?
Gartner says disruption set to force dramatic change in the data center
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2607018/computers-all/disruption-set-to-force-dramatic-change-in-the-data-center-gartner.html
Mobile and social shifts grow, showing opportunity
http://newsroom.cisco.com/feature-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1486404
Cisco study shows IT’s self image needs work
http://www.techweb.com/networking/240154578/it-s-self-image-needs-work-cisco-study-shows.html
6. Ask Sgt. Deb
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QUESTION:
I’m trying hard to keep up with all the latest developments in IT to help me grow in my job and to be honest, to get ready for moving on to something better. I’m currently an IT admin in a medium sized business and I really want to move into the enterprise, maybe even to a cloud datacenter. Anyway I’ve been having a hard time getting my head wrapped around Software Defined Networking (SDN) and now along comes a whole new thing: Transport SDN. I’ve been hearing about that lately and I really don’t understand what it is. Can you help? â€" Allen M.
ANSWER:
You aren’t the only one who has trouble keeping up with all the new technologies, Allen. You probably know by now that SDN is basically a way of separating the so-called control plane from the data plane to make networking simpler. The control plane deals with the network map and routing table information, and the data plane is the router component that makes the decision of where to send inbound packets of data. Of course that’s a very simplified explanation.
Transport SDN is about extending this concept to wide area networking by allowing optical links to be torn down and rerouted. The idea is to make the transport layer of networking (remember your OSI model?) more flexible and optimize the way data moves between applications. Here’s a pretty good detailed explanation:
http://www.techweb.com/networking/240161111/transport-sdn-what-it-is-and-4-reasons-we-need-it.html
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