15th Annual SysAdmin Appreciation Day
Today — Friday, July 25, 2014 — is the 15th Annual System Administrator Appreciation Day! Please join us in thanking the server, network, and data center people who keep all our technical ships running smoothly — no matter what time it is, day or night, weekday, weekend, or holiday, 365 days a year. We designed […]
Your Data is Telling You Something
I found an article this morning through my daily cruise through tech news. I mentioned the company mentioned in the article, Codespaces, yesterday when I was talking with our management team. Codespaces was wiped out of existence by an attack that ultimately led to the near total destruction of their data. The timing is serendipitous […]
Simple Desktop Virtualization: Building a Robust Environment Using Microsoft Remote Desktop Services
There have been a number of new features introduced to Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2012 that make the deployment of desktop virtualization an attractive option for businesses looking to enhance the experience of their desktop users. This post will briefly review the concept of desktop virtualization and the two primary deployment models but […]
Hosted Solutions Panel Discussion – FISPA Atlanta 2014
Last week I had the great opportunity to present at and participate in a panel discussion at FISPA’s Atlanta 2014 conference. The panel and presentations were focused on the lessons that the presenters and panelists had learned from providing hosted solutions and services to their customers. This topic suited DataYard very well, as we have […]
Utilizing Cgroups to Balance Resources
How often have you endured complaints from users about server or service performance because of a small subset of users who are taxing the system, utilizing the majority of the available resources? How do you manage resource sharing on a multi-purpose server that may have a database server and web server running together? We have […]
Windows Fusion 2.0 – 6/13/2014
DataYard system’s engineers have recently completed a new web cluster based on Server 2012 R2 and IIS 8.5. The cutover from our existing cluster to the new cluster will not require customer interaction and sites should not incur any downtime. We will be changing DNS records for all sites on 6/13/2014 at 5 PM. Please […]
Server Administration with PowerShell 4.0
Server Administration with PowerShell 4 TL;DR: PowerShell 4 is awesome, if you are a Windows Technician, Admin, Engineer, Architect, etc. you should be using it. Intro In 2007 Microsoft released PowerShell and since then the tool has grown to become one of the most, if not the most, powerful windows administration tool available for Microsoft […]
CLEC & xDSL Technology
Introduction DataYard has been providing internet access and dedicated WAN services for years, but did you know that as a CLEC, or competitive local exchange carrier, we are one of less than 100 such carriers in Ohio? There’s a lot of mystery behind what a CLEC is and the relationship that exists between them and […]
Domain Name Resolution Introduction
DNS RESOLUTION INTRODUCTION DNS (Domain Name Service) is the process of resolving domain names, such as www.datayardworks.com to it’s IP address, An IP address is the numeric value that a computer connected to a network is assigned, which allows it to communicate with other systems, similar to a telephone number. DNS works as the “phone […]
NTP Amplification DDoS Attacks
Over the past few months the Internet has seen increased DDoS (distributed denial of service attack) activity which started with DNS amplification attacks and then moved onto NTP amplification attacks. For now the DDoS attacks have stopped, however it’s only a matter of time before the next DDoS attack method is discovered. It’s an ongoing […]