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Network Administrator Responsibilities – What Do Network Administrators Do?

CLLAX — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 14:14:03 +0000

Network administrators deal with almost every element of a computer network system. Their work is considered to be essential in many industries since a lot of sectors have grown to be dependent on computer technologies. A computer system has a lot of parts which needs to be constantly monitored and maintained. It is also essential that during a computer network’s installation process, everything should be properly configured. The presence of a network administrator in different organizations is crucial to ensure that various aspects of their computer systems are fully functional. In order to carry out the job efficiently, network administrators make use of various tools and knowledge that they have acquired through experience and education.

Given that, let us look further into the profession by citing several network administrator responsibilities. Here are some of the tasks that network administrators deal with:

Configure, install and administer computer networks and systems within the organization.
Monitor the network for problems and have them repaired.
Upgrade network hardware and software.
Look after the security of a network through implementing various security measures and perform necessary updates.
Set-up accounts for users and assist users whenever they encounter problems with their accounts.
Examine the current state of the network and determine if any changes should be done to them for improvement.
Think of ways for backing up data and other recovery plans in case a network failure occurs.
Teach users on how to correctly use hardware and software.
Be able to assess problems reported within the network and determine ways to have them fixed.

The network administrator responsibilities mentioned above are the common duties that these individuals carry out. To become a network administrator, an individual must also possess several qualities which are crucial so that they can do their jobs efficiently.

Here are some other important characteristics that a network administrator must have:

Strong analytical skills
Interpersonal skills
Strong problem solving skills
Technical skills
Multi-tasking skills

The job of network administrators can involve a lot of intricacies and the above mentioned skills are essential for anyone who would want to succeed in the job. In addition, acquiring knowledge and maintaining a strong interest with computers and other technical concepts is important for any network administrator. And on top of all of these, there should be that willingness and dedication to the craft. Considering how the field of information technology (IT) is very dynamic, these professionals need to constantly educate and update themselves with the latest changes in the world of IT.

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Enterprise BYOD: Who Is In Control?

CLLAX — Sun, 08 Sep 2019 17:03:49 +0000

Many business leaders view the push for a “Bring-Your-Own-Device” (BYOD https://cllax.com/top-10-best-byod-mobile-device-management-software.html) model as a sign that businesses just need to start providing their employees with trendier, more mobile devices to appease their users and “catch up” with the consumer market. However, many of these users already own and use smartphones, tablets, and laptops on regular basis. Users are not asking businesses to provide them with additional devices, they’re simply asking for the ability to use their own.

So why haven’t we seen businesses open their networks and grant their users access to the data and services they need? Why are we still talking about the struggles of BYOD and saying no to our users?

The answer is twofold and is rooted in the fact that both parties are reluctant to give up control.

Businesses do not want to start relinquishing their ability to lockdown corporate devices, pick and choose when and how employees can work, and always having logs of what workers are doing. Employees, on the other hand, want to be able to choose whichever device they want, irrespective of security and management feature sets and are unwilling to sign their personal devices over to the remote-wipe capabilities of their company’s whimsical IT system administrator. Both parties need to consider each side’s perspective in order to make a successful BYOD model a reality.

The missing piece to this discussion is the role of the vendors when it comes to BYOD. Before businesses can truly embrace BYOD, vendors need to start designing solutions differently than they have been. These changes include releasing consumer-level devices with more manageability, security, and features that give users more control over the “personal” parts of their device without sacrificing the integrity of the “corporate” areas. We are already beginning to see this play out in newly announced product road maps related to Android, iOS, and Windows software and devices.

From the enterprise services perspective, vendors need to begin designing creative solutions to accessing applications without relying on specific device configurations or software. We are seeing this already as well with the increase in Software-as-a-Service platforms and “Private Cloud” functionality allowing users to access services through the web with little more than a standard browser. With this level of service in place, businesses are able to leverage intelligent, secure solutions to help grant access to these private, web-based services to users both inside and outside their campus networks.

With solid, accessible, and secure service infrastructures in place on the back end and modern, user-specific devices in users’ hands, a successful BYOD model in the enterprise is finally within reach.

My Ideal SAN

CLLAX — Sun, 08 Sep 2019 16:17:36 +0000

First let me tell you by no means i am a SAN administrator, however i was lucky to work on a project on my new job where we were in search for all flash SAN to replace our FUSION-IO cards, this project involved lot of testing ,analysis and negotiation. During this project i have learned quite few things, most of it is related to dealing with vendors. While there are some great articles which covers most of the technical details, i had tough time finding info on what i should be looking for when purchasing a SAN. Returning two major SAN’s just because they didn’t meet our expectations,I am going to list out things that i have learned through out the journey, hopefully it will be helpful when you are in market for a new SAN. I like to get deep dirty into details, this list might be an overkill for some institutions, but i think if you need most bang for your buck you really need to make sure that you understand how SAN works. There are 4 pieces to this puzzle:

Gather metrics, have a very good understanding of what your current environment is, have your numbers backed up by good collection of perfmon data.
Write down features that are must to have and good to have. Like you might need excellent performance but might not need dedup, adding dedup to the mix might degrade your performance or you could say you need to have lot of storage then compression and dedup is necessary as long as you are OK to take some hit on performance. Some of the main features are like Compression,Snapshot,Replication,Dedup,QoS,Backups,Encryption and Clones, there could be more features.
Bench mark existing storage, i have used sqlio before but with newer “intelligent” SAN’s sqlio might not be good tool as it writes all zero’s so most likely you would be testing just the controllers. Diskspd is good replacement for sqlio, David Klee has excellent post here related to diskspd. You need benchmark your existing storage to understand what you would be expecting from new SAN, this will help you in understanding how much you would gain or loose. You can also provide the same sample script to the SAN vendor so that they can test there system and provide there results.
Shop around for SAN, this is basically research, ask friends from other organizations what they use, attending events like PASS and Super Computing, if you are in SQL Server world most of leading vendors will be present at PASS events. Super Computing is also very good place to learn about newer SAN’s.

Have a very good understanding of what you are looking for, capture baseline using perfmon. Let perfmon run for couple weeks on the server or servers that you would be using SAN for, few key metrics that helped me:

Physical Disk – Avg. Disk sec/Read ( Read Latency)
Physical Disk – Avg. Disk sec/Write (Write Latency)
Physical Disk – Disk Reads/sec ( IOPS) – Use this to understand what % is read activity
Physical Disk – Disk Writes/sec (IOPS) – Use this to understand what % is write activity
Physical Disk – Disk Transfers/sec (IOPS)
Physical Disk – Disk Bytes / sec (Throughput)

After reviewing the perfmon data you should be able to answer few important questions about your environment:

What is average IOPS ( in total for all drives , if you different flavor’s of drive then get it for each individual), what is peak and how long does it stay at peak.
What is average read/write latency? What is R/W latency at peak IOPS.
What is avg throughput, what are peaks.

The goal here is you should have good understanding of your averages but also need to know when you hit the peak is the SAN going to crash or just be fine.

So far you have spent enough time gathering details about your environment,by now you should have a very good idea what you are looking for. Just like any other product every vendor will say there SAN is best, at the end of the day you really need to know what is $/Gb value given SAN meets your requirements. When you actually get to $/GB i felt it was really tricky, because each vendor would calculate it different. Some calculate with estimated compression ( what they think they can compress it to , some claim 8X, i have never seen more than 3 X for SQL Server) and dedup, some calculate $/GB before RAID. I was very thrilled when a upcoming SAN vendor told me i could get $3/GB, i was jumping up and down, after 1 month of testing and lot of back and forth we realized for us it would be $12/GB ( as matter of fact anyone using SQL Server on there SAN would be paying $12/GB). You might hear a lot of SAN vendors claiming 250M IOPS with sub milli second latency, yeahhh they get those numbers with 4KB block size, in SQL Server everything is between 8KB and 64KB. There are some really good SAN vendors, you just need to do your research and ask lot of questions. After dealing with so many vendors i realized had i asked them to fill out the excel sheet, i would have saved 100 hours of my life… ok i might be exaggerating a little bit but for sure many hours. I made a simple excel sheet, i filled out the columns for each vendor as i went through my POC, this helped me in making my decision.

The potential targets of Cyber Attack are normally

CLLAX — Sun, 08 Sep 2019 16:00:58 +0000

In spite of the fact that the expression “Cyber Attack” is becoming a mainstream term on the Internet, a solid definition has yet to be characterized. The basic definition is the premeditative use of disruptive actions against networks and computers, with the plan to make destruction and cause hurt. Indeed, even with this definition, there is no concrete confirmation that a worldwide cyber-terrorism assault is a reality. Of course, smaller attacks have happened, however the danger of a worldwide cyber-terrorism event is not established.

Interest in Cyber Attack started in late 1980s, and the apprehension of cyber terrorism escalated as the year 2000 neared. The skepticism the general population felt as the thousand years drew closer was shown in concern over the security of computer networks as of now. People stressed that there was a bug that would influence all systems at the stroke of midnight on the year 1999. As apprehension increased, thoughts swung to what could a terrorist bunch accomplish by making pandemonium on computers.

The thought of “immaculate” Cyber Attack, which means activities that are completed exclusively in cyberspace, is a complex and regularly talked about concept. It is possible that another type of terrorist could be produced – a gathering that does not require a lot of money to work and can amass themselves rapidly and easily on the Internet.

Cyber Attack groups that are around today are typically very well-spoken organizations that are fit for causing overwhelming damage to an extensive variety of targets. While most are concerned with the assault on the computer system itself, it is truly the bigger picture that is truly the fundamental concern – how this assault on the infrastructure of groups and organizations, and the general population everywhere, affects the genuine people who use these systems. Also, when a company or association focuses on one territory on their system to bulk up security, they might be dismissing another aspect, which is then at risk.

Since computers are the weapons of Cyber Attack, it would be a characteristic progression to say that perhaps restricting access to computers may keep away from these attacks. In spite of the fact that it would seem a decent solution, it is not a realistic one. However, it is advantageous to have clear rules and standards set up for those who have entry to Internet-connected system computers so that security can be fixed where this is concerned. To accomplish this objective, there is a need to characterize the standard of security for computer networks. By coming up with industry guidelines, companies and organizations will have a focus for their security practices.

The potential targets of Cyber Attack are normally, computers. While the event of fraud is entirely insignificant, the effect on the person whose character has been stolen is very substantial. Plus, Cyber Attack can use this stolen character to shroud their own actions, along these lines demolishing the person’s name. The Internet really makes stealing someone’s personality rather simple and provides the ideal environment for cyber terrorism.

Another interesting concept is that of “virtual” fraud. This would include someone using an online record to put on a show to be that person and access the relationship that this person has with their other online relationships. In doing this, a cyber terrorist can access private data and can also plant viruses alongside the email since the beneficiary would be trusting of where the email originated from. Also, the increase in the exchanging of online stock has made a situation that makes it practical to manipulate the prices of stock. A Cyber Attack can use these methods to move these markets voluntarily. A very much composed cyber assault on a bank or organization’s stock can be exceptionally harming.

Most cyber attacks are liable to be successful if they are completed on individual corporations instead of on the administration. However, the administration relies on the progressing stability of the economy all in all, so if this structure becomes influenced by an assault, it will also extraordinarily influence the legislature and can be seen as having been orchestrated to be a cyber-terrorism assault on the administration element.

It is exceptionally likely that a person can talk and become included with a specific questionable cause without leaving their home or become suspect. By using this anonymous strategy, someone can become included with a terrorist gathering and take orders or make plans and complete these plans, all without constantly meeting someone else from the gathering eye to eye. Also, this kind of sorting out of cyber terrorists creates an issue for law requirement, as it is exceptionally difficult to find specific groups. Plus, terrorist groups with similar intentions can locate one another and unify much easier through the Internet and can strengthen.

Another concept that has been kicking around about cyber terrorism is that it is also used as a type of theater, implying that it is the vehicle in which they pick up a crowd of people and can therefore solicit funds. As of now, almost 50% of the cyber-terrorist groups that the State Department keeps watch on, have their own particular websites, and are regularly used to acquire funds and to transmit coded messages to others in the gathering.

Moreover, finding a solution to cyber terrorism is useless unless the whole issue is taken a gander at all in all. A legitimate, specialized, and social arrangement must be instituted to make tight safeguards where computer interactions are concerned. There must be more security as to how people can post data, as well as how they can get it.

Fundamentally, the inspiration of cyber terrorists is political, economic, or social and involves the gathering endeavoring to make some incredible change in our society. Because of the way that our society is presently exceptionally subordinate upon the Internet and our system of e-commerce and web saving money, it makes the risk of cyber terrorism manifestly obvious.

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