One of the biggest problems with a data-centric business environment is merely finding the right data in order to do your job. Traditional search tools have some efficacy in completing these tasks, but really understanding not only what you need but what is useful in the eyes of others can be helpful as well.

Social sites and the concept of social networking has been around for a while now, with tools like FaceBook connecting people all across the planet. But it also has a play inside the corporate environment as well. Finding others in the corporation who have similar interests and are working on similar projects can augment cooperation. Learning what kinds of content your peers consider "interesting" helps you better understand your job and where you fit.

Best of all, leveraging content aggregation and social sites helps you better feel like part of a cohesive team rather than one person in a sea of others.

NewsGator has a tool that enables much of this collaborative functionality called Social Sites. In this podcast, I speak with Brian Kellner of NewsGator about their product and how social networking within the corporate firewall can be an excellent fit for today's enterprise environments.

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Instructor-led training can be expensive, and its tough to learn through reading multiple-thousand page books. Computer-based training with all its multimedia capabilities lies somewhere in the middle -- reasonably priced, entertaining enough to keep your attention, and a visual source of learning while doing.

In this podcast, I interview Roy Furr with CBT Nuggets, makers of all kinds of computer-based training for IT technologies as well as preparation for IT certifications. In this podcast, we talk about the state of CBT's today and how we think the job market is dealing with both training and certification needs. We'll talk about employers and their desire for certified employees, and how businesses can get exceptional training at exceptionally inexpensive prices through the right training channels.

Even better, in this podcast we'll talk about an offer which will get your 10% off the price of some training videos through CBT Nuggets. Listen to the podcast to find out how!

(Full disclosure: I am an independent trainer for CBT Nuggets)

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User Account Control is for many the bane of Windows Vista. Its encompassing ideas of reducing the spread and impact of administrator rights are great in theory, but difficult in practice. But at the same time, getting rid of administrator rights in our networks is a key need that we all wish we could solve.

In this podcast, I interview John Moyer, CEO of BeyondTrust. We talk about the regulatory, compliance, configuration control, and malware problems associated with the widespread distribution of administrator rights to those people who shouldn't have them. We discuss how tools exist that are improvements on UAC which eliminate this need while still providing laser-focused elevation for needed applications.

I'll admit that i wasn't aware of BeyondTrust's Privilege Manager product, but after talking with John I'm impressed with how this product can secure a network, eliminate unnecessary admin rights, and do so in a manner that's easy to use and fully supported by Microsoft.

This one's worth a listen.

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Monitoring in any system can be a tough game. The data from monitoring systems provides the administrator with a huge amount of data to digest. In order to make use of that information for proactive management, there's a massive level of analysis required. If your monitoring system alerts you that one virtual server has a high memory use condition, how can you correlate that information with its effect on the other systems in your virtualization environment?

What you need are tools that add intelligence to that monitoring data, tools that crunch that incredible amount of data, correlate it with data from other systems in the environment, and ultimately provide you with actionable information.

In this podcast, I interview Bala Murugan of eG Innovations. This company specializes in providing that intelligence to all the layers of IT. Here, we'll talk about the problems of managing monitoring information in virtualization environments and the tools that can turn this raw data into useful, actionable results.

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The first five people who drop a comment to this post with their name, email address, and a thought about how they can save power in their computing environment will receive a free copy of Power Save, compliments of Faronics. Thanks to Faronics for graciously donating these five free holiday gifts to our community!

Green computing initiatives in IT has focused heavily on the problems of power overconsumption in the data center. But its the workstations in your network that consume far more power than your servers. Did you know that 1000 workstations can consume nearly $62,000 in power alone if their power consumption isn't managed?

Faronics is a software company probably most known for its tool Deep Freeze. Their newest product, Power Save, can help reduce the overall cost to power workstations by turning them off when they aren't in use. Check out this webcast on Faronics and Power Save to learn more about how managed power configurations can save power and help out Mother Nature.

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In this excITing interview with Travis Morrison of the New Belgium Brewery, we talk about what its like to be a Sr. Systems Administrator at a place that sells some of the best small-batch craft beers in the nation. We talk about New Belgium's recent migration from a Novell-based directory to Microsoft Active Directory, their success with Microsoft's Unified Communications platform, and just how much fun it can be to work in the IT Department of a major brewery.

Now I'm off to kick back a few...

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In the old days, building and maintaining a backup site for disaster recovery was financially impossible for all but the most critcial of network services. Buying and managing duplicate servers in a redundant site that did little until the big event hit was a huge expense and management headache.

But with today replication software, especially when combined with virtualization, in many ways these roadblocks go away. In today's podcast we'll talk with Bob Roudebush of DoubleTake software. We'll discuss today's technology in server and data replication, how virtualization drastically changes the playing field for disaster recovery options, and the specific issues associated with replicating transactional databases like SQL, Exchange, and Active Directory Domain Controllers.

If you're considering the implementation of a disaster recovery site in your network environment, you'll want to spend 18 minutes with us to learn some tips and tricks to do it successfully.

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Are you still using Excel spreadsheets to manage your IP addresses? If you do, how hard is it to keep that spreadsheet up to date? Considering the needs not only of compliance but the need in an DHCP environment to historically track IP addresses to individual computers, your Excel spreadsheet is likely not enough.

Enter the BlueCat Networks Proteus Platform. This appliance-based toolset for managing the IP addresses in your network interfaces directly with your DHCP and DNS servers to provide real-time and historical reports of IP address usage and trending information.

In this podcast we'll talk with David Martinek and Branko Miskov of BlueCat Networks, makers of the Proteus Platform, about the need for automated IP management and how it can improve your ability to monitor and manage your enviornment.

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Every industry in the United States comes under some form of regulation as to the storage, archival, and protection of its data. Whether you're in the medical industry and regulated by HIPAA, a public company that falls under Sarbanes-Oxley, or really any company that falls under the Federal Rules of Civil Provedure, you likely have some legal requirement to protect your data.

If you're not doing that, then your company can be legally liable. In this podcast with Ryan Tracy of Privacy Networks, we talk about the rules and the solutions for bringing your data under control. In the same vein, tools exist that protect email against spam, viruses, and other baddies, all of which can integrate into secure archival tools.

If you're concerned about the legal liability associated with your corporate data, you'll want to hear Ryan's story.

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Is your computing environment spread across multiple sites? Do you have file servers in a central location that sloooowly shares files to those remote locations? Did you know that replication technologies have now advanced to the point where you can distribute mirrors of those shares to multiple sites that fully supports locking and multiple user access?

Did you also know that the same technology that mirrors those file shares across any number of sites can also serve as a continuous backup solution for the same data?

I didn't.

At least until I talked with Ellen Ohlenbusch of GlobalSCAPE who clued me in on two of their new products that solve a host of issues associated with file sharing across multiple, dispersed sites. In this podcast, we'll talk about just those issues and how the GlobalSCAPE solution resolves them.

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The introduction of PowerShell has completely changed the management functionality for services like Exchange 2007. But for Microsoft's soon-to-arrive server operating system, are there any major changes to how it works?

Will PowerShell's security make your environment more secure or less administerable? What are some of the best ways that you can immediately use PowerShell now to administer your Windows servers and Active Directory?

In this exclusive podcast with Don Jones, evangelist for Windows scripting and automation, and author of the recent book Microsoft Windows PowerShell: TFM, we answer these questions and more. Don talks about his impressions of PowerShell, how it will work with Server 2008, and what it doesn't do. We even get to talk about some of the best scripts he's written and his personal worst career-limiting moves.

Its a podcast you definitely won't want to miss.

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Understanding your network is one thing, but proving that you do is fully another. With compliance regulations requring a database of record showing what on your network changed and when, it is growing more and more impossible every day to fulfill the needs of documenting and auditing your environment.

That's why tools like Ecora Auditor Pro exist. Inventorying and storing thousands of elements about every machine on your network, this toolset means you can pass compliance audits with ease. All the while you get a better running network because you have more information about that network.

In this podcast I interview Brian Cote, senior product manager for Ecora Software. Here we talk about the challenges of network documentation and compliance and how the Ecora Auditor Pro resolves some of the critical missing auditing pieces in our native operating systems.

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There's a changing security landscape out on the horizon, and its name is virtualization. Incorporating virtualization into your network solves all sorts of problems, but unless you plan for them, it can create a host of them as well.

Think about it. With traditional physical systems, they're usually powered on and operational all the time -- including during your patching and configuration management operations. With virtual machines, that isn't always the case. Your template machines, your snapshots, even your disaster recovery virtual machines may not get their regular security care and feeding like they should, simply because they're not necessarily on all the time.

In this podcast, Allwyn Sequeira, Senior VP of BlueLane technologies talks with us about some of these problems and some solutions to virtualization security. He talks about the BlueLane Virtual Shield that sits between the hypervisor and the virtual machine to rip out exploit traffic as it passes by. Allwyn is a dynamic speaker and definitely passionate about the subject. You'll definitely enjoy the listen.

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I recently had the opportunity to speak with Jyrki Huhta, Alexander List, and Jani Kenttälä of Clarified Networks, best known for their freeware VMware Applicance called HowNetWorks.

If you haven't had the opportunity to see HowNetWorks, definitely take a look at this network packet analysis tool here. This fantastic tool makes the process of network traffic analysis very easy, showing traffic streams that pass by and enabling the administrator to move backwards and forwards through time to see the relationship between network traffic and problem analysis.

In this podcast, we talk about how to use network instrumentation like HowNetWorks to analyze and troubleshoot problems on the network. We talk about how the HowNetWorks tool enables even the uninitiated to recognize and trace back network traffic to isolate problems on the network. You'll learn some of the tricks they use to isolate problems on the network. Definitely check this one out.

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Holy "Holy Grail of Virtualization" Batman. The long-awaited release of VMware Workstation 6.0 also comes with the new realization that this upgrade can actually support a fully-functioning ESX instance as a hosted virtual machine. This means that if you have a powerful enough machine, you can set up an entire Virtual Infrastructure environment with VMotion and everything -- right from the comfort of your $189 VMware Workstation app.

Check out the podcast for some thoughts of mine as I attempt to make it work on some new equipment I've recenty acquired. You will need the following paper because the setup is not straightforward. This paper illustrates how to install and configure VMware ESX3 Server to run within VMware Workstation 6. From this, VirtualCenter, VMotion, HA and DRS features can be configured. Although performance is significantly reduced from that of a physical server, this type of environment opens considerable possibilities for portable client demonstrations and is excellent for self training and small lab environments.

Get the document here:
http://www.xtravirt.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=75&func=fileinfo&id=11

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Introducing the first Realtime Windows Server excITing podcast. In this, our new excITing series, we'll be talking with IT people just like you in exciting and unusual industries. In this new series we'll meet with IT people all over the world, whether they're sending satellites into space, keeping roller coasters operational, or like today keeping exhibits and the planetarium up and operational. In every case, these are the regular people who keep the Windows Servers running.

In today's podcast, we'll be talking with Stan Rehfuss, Director of Technology, Systems, and Operations for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Stan's job, among other things, is to keep the computers humming that power the museum's planetarium and ticketing system. We'll talk about both systems, and some of the neat and interesting ways the museum uses technology in the education and entertainment industry.

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If a picture is worth a thousand words and video comes in at 30 frames a second, then is a second of video worth 30,000 words? If those words are in a log file, then potentially yes.

A relatively new concept in the idea of employee monitoring, ICA/RDP stream recording enables the administrator to watch what goes on in a Terminal Services or Citrix session as it occurs. Tools like CNS Software's RecordTS record what's actually going on inside the protocol stream, making the resulting videos very small as well as encrypted. If your company is worried about meeting compliance regulations, or you need to closely monitor employee actions on the server -- like when they're doing financial or sensitive transactions -- RecordTS is a tool that may interest you.

In this podcast, we talk with Cassandra Cranston and Claudio Rodrigues of CNS Software. We discuss the need for video recording for certain industries as well as the technology behind this interesting and useful new method for Terminal Server and Citrix monitoring.