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Unifying Management Systems via PowerShell In today’s data center, it is quite common for enterprise and SMBs to deploy multiple monitoring products to manage their heterogeneous environments; SQL Foglight for database server monitoring, System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) for Windows Server monitoring and agentless solutions like LogicMonitor and Zenoss for Linux and hardware monitoring, to name […]

Much has been reported about the Surface Pro 4 and power management issues …and the Surface Pro 3 and sleep has had similar issues early on.

Test-driven development (TDD) is a concept that I have started utilizing when writing code. If you are unfamiliar with this concept, TDD can simply be described as the practice of developing the tests before coding the actual logic. If you are new to this concept, it may seem backwards to write a test before having any code to run it against, but I have found that writing code this way can help eliminate many potential bugs in your code. In this blog post I will describe the basic process of developing code using TDD, and walk through an example of writing code using this strategy to demonstrate how you can use TDD to write code more effectively. (Note: Mocks, Fakes, Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control will not be discussed since the objective of this post is only to demonstrate the TDD process.)

As a Project Manager, the most valuable tool that I have in my tool box is communication. It’s a Swiss Army knife that can bring teams together, solve problems, and ensure client satisfaction. I believe communication is the common denominator when leading successful projects.

A new variant of the CryptoWall ransomware is making the rounds, labeled as version 4.0. It behaves in a similar manner, arriving as an attachment to an email that the user clicks to install the malware, which begins encrypting disks and shares.

In part 2 of this series on Web Performance Testing with Visual Studio 2013, Kevin walks you through creating validation rules, extraction rules and coded web tests for your applications. Part 1 dealt with creating a WebTest using Microsoft Web Test Recorder, which is good for testing the overall process. If you want to setup benchmarking or confirm the application working correctly, then you will need to setup coded web tests, validation rules and extraction rules.

Angular is a framework designed to make it easier to build client applications (that is, apps written with JavaScript and HTML that run on various devices, including mobile devices and browsers). Business users often expect a rich user experience and don’t like to compromise on features just because the app is delivered over the web or via a mobile device instead of installed on a desktop. For this reason, an approach to building apps called Single Page Applications (SPA) has evolved. Angular provides built-in support for SPA via templates, components, services, and tools that help developers call web services and manipulate the data that is returned.

Recently, iVision was contracted by a long-term client to conduct performance testing on an intranet application they had acquired from a third-party. The process involved coordinating and integrating technologies such as Microsoft Visual Studio’s Web Performance Testing and Load Testing, Microsoft SQL Server’s SQL Profiler tool, Performance Monitor, and Microsoft Excel. Our client wanted to ensure that the product would respond well while under expected (and greater-than-expected) loads using existing hardware.

What characteristics make for a good Agile team? The main traits everyone on the team should possess are desire for collaboration and continuous improvement. An Agile team is all about communication (usually daily), teamwork, problem solving, technical development skills, and striving to improve the team’s velocity with each iteration.

If you have ever developed a custom master page for SharePoint, you may have been faced with the challenge of trying to add a content editor web part to a master page. You may have researched this and found that it is possible to add a web part directly into your master page, however you would be unable to edit the web part from the browser rendering the content editor web part useless in this scenario. Fortunately, there is a way you can work around this constraint.

We can’t just point and click our way to answers anymore. The modern IT Infrastructure has more devices, more computers, more phones, more Access Points, Storage Units and Servers than ever before. Virtualized Infrastructure made it easy for us to “just add another VM”, and before we knew it, we all ended up with Infrastructure Sprawl. If we’re trying to manage our systems and get work done using the Next-Next-Next-Finish style of systems administration, we’re all going to have to work through lunch, and the weekend’s not looking too good either.

Securing your network can be a crazy and scary proposition….and it’s one of the IT tasks that is never completed. With the advent of cloud computing, the security landscape has expanded and with it new opportunities. One of these opportunities is to leverage the cloud for “Identity and Access”.