February, 2009

Featured IT Blogger of the Week: Eric Siebert

This week’s IT Knowledge Exchange blogger of the week is Eric Siebert. Eric wears many hats — he is a guest blogger for the SearchServerVirtualization and Virtualization Pro blogs, now on IT Knowledge Exchange. He is an author on VMware topics, releasing his first book, “VMware VI3 Implementation and Administration” this summer. He also has built an expansive online resource on VMware-related topics, VMware-land.com.

One incredibly useful feature of the site: Eric maintains a comprehensive list of virtualization bloggers, resources, calendars, tools and even Twitter users on what he calls the “VMware Launchpad“.

Any virtualization pros would be doing themselves a disservice by not visiting this page, as it condenses the most useful links onto one easy-to-navigate page. Cheers to Eric for staying on top of the virtualization game, in many different arenas.

IT Knowledge Exchange Community Update for 02/26/09

Here is what’s happening in our community lately:

• Knowledge Points Amazon giveaway
• Want an IT Knowledge Exchange t-shirt?
• Featured blog of the week
• Featured questions
• Featured blog posts
• Messages from the TechTarget network

Continued »

IT Knowledge Exchange Community Update for 02/24/09

Here is what’s happening in our community lately:

• Knowledge Points Amazon giveaway
• Want an IT Knowledge Exchange t-shirt?
• Featured member of the week: Buddyfarr
• Featured questions
• Featured blog posts
• New community blogs
• Messages from the TechTarget network

Continued »

Some new features that have released on the site

Members

As we continue to improve the site we have released a few new small features to enhance everyone’s experience on the site.

The first is that when someone asks a question they will automatically be emailed when the question is updated. This should help get people to provide more information on the specific problem they are having when asked by other community members. Also this will get people back to the site to report if the answer provided solved their problem.

The second is that now you can easily get to your profile page by clicking your user name in the upper right hand corner where you can edit your profile etc.

This is just the begging of a lot of changes we are expecting this year. Things we are looking to add in the future are:

Improved “Ask a question” functionality

Knowledge Point tracker that appears when you ask or answer questions

A reputation management system

Improved search results

And other ideas that you share with me. So if there is something you are looking for email me at sbrooks AT techtarget.com

Thanks

Sean

Featured IT Blogger of the Week: Jim Hietala of Compliance Focus

This week’s featured IT blogger is Jim Hietala of Compliance Focus. Compliance Research Group is a consulting and research organization whose aim is to help users and vendors deal with IT governance, risk and compliance issues, processes and programs more effectively. Their sister site, Compliance Focus, is an online resource site providing information, commentary and blogs in these same areas. Whether you’re looking for some additional risk management resources, or wanting to learn more about automated compliance checking, Compliance Focus is a great place to start.

You can visit Jim’s Compliance Focus blog here: http://www.compliancefocus.com/

IT Knowledge Exchange Community Update for 02/19/09

Here is what’s happening in our community lately:

• Knowledge Points Amazon giveaway
• Want an IT Knowledge Exchange t-shirt?
• Featured blogger of the week
• Featured questions
• Featured blog posts
• New community blogs
• Messages from the TechTarget network

Continued »

IT Knowledge Exchange Community Update for 02/17/09

Here is what’s happening in our community lately:

• Knowledge Points Amazon giveaway
• Want an IT Knowledge Exchange t-shirt?
• Featured member
• Featured questions
• Featured blog posts
• New community blogs
• Messages from the TechTarget network

Knowledge Points Amazon Giveaway

Is there an Amazon gift card in your future? Only your Knowledge Points will tell. Visit the blog post for more information.

Featured Question: Iron Mountain

Iron Mountain has recently joined the IT Knowledge Exchange community, and has a question for the community members:

Have you moved to online backup for your corporation, and if so, are you still using tape backup?

Be sure to give Iron Mountain your feedback by clicking on the link and submitting an answer or discussion.

Want an IT Knowledge Exchange T-Shirt?

IT Knowledge Exchange is currently running a promotion to welcome new members — ask and answer one question each, and you will be eligible to receive an IT Knowledge Exchange t-shirt. Simply e-mail me at jenny@itknowledgeexchange.com once you have asked a question and answered a question, and tell me your address and preferred t-shirt size. You will receive a t-shirt as thanks within 2-3 weeks. Anyone is eligible, so get into the community and start spreading the knowledge!

IT Knowledge Exchange Member of the Week

This week’s featured member is Troy Tate, better known to us as Labnuke99. Troy is an IT Manager at an electronic components company, and specializes in networking and information security. He not only knows how to answer questions well, but he also is very skilled at crafting great questions. Since he joined IT Knowledge Exchange in January of 2008, he has earned nearly 16,000 Knowledge Points with us. Congratulations, Labnuke99, on being our member of the week! We’re so glad to have you with us.

You can view the questions Troy has asked and answered on his profile.

Troy is also a blogger with us; you can check out “IT Trenches” here.

Featured Questions

Over the past week, we’ve seen some great questions come through IT Knowledge Exchange, but some questions are still waiting for an answer. Click on one of our selected questions below, and spread the knowledge!

• VLAN basics step by step

• Hyper-V Manager console showing no virtual machines

• Running .NET code to manipulate SQL tables

• Avaya 4610SW VoIP quality issue - connecting to Cisco gear

• Protect Sybase DB on CentOS server

• Pros and cons - Ovation

• Can Cisco ASA firewalls restrict Internet access to branch offices?

• MOSS 2007 - Restrict document library checkout to a single person at a time

• Restore backup from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2003

• Active Directory migration question

Featured Blog Posts

Browse the sampling of selected blog posts below or go here to view all.

• Microsoft and Cisco make nice… again | Unified Communications: Click to Talk

• Clean up new PCs with PC Euphemism | Vista Enterprise Desktop

• Reader’s Digest gets into the job-loss act | IT Career JumpStart

• Fighting shutdown during slowdown | Custom Application Development

• VMware Infrastructure Management Assistant (VIMA) | The Musings of an IT Consultant

Start your own IT blog and earn some extra cash.

New Community Blogs

Channel Marker | A SearchITChannel.com blog

Commentary for value-added resellers (VARs) and systems integrators on partner programs, storage, security, networking and systems.

Messages from the TechTarget Network

A majority of ERP projects go over budget, report says

Of the 1,300 companies surveyed by an expert enterprise resource planning (ERP) consulting firm, 93% said their ERP implementation projects took much longer than expected, and 65% indicated that they went over budget.
Find out what realistic expectations you should set for an ERP project and learn how to avoid the pitfalls of a costly and lengthy implementation process.

Corporate reporting: The next information governance frontier?

Most politicians believe we’re heading into an era of increased regulation. What does that mean for IT and compliance? Share your thoughts.

As always, we want your feedback.
Send it to me at jenny@itknowledgeexchange.com

Thanks,

Community Manager

Featured IT Blogger of the Week: Scott Lowe

This week’s featured blogger is Scott Lowe, of blog.scottlowe.org.
Scott is a respected virtualization and storage pro, and is a contributor on SearchVMware.com, as well as SearchServerVirtualization.com. He writes mostly on topics surrounding virtualization, and recently asked his readers, “What if Hypervisors shared a file system?”:

VMware has VMFS. Microsoft has CSV, or will in Windows Server 2008 R2. (Does XenServer have a clustered file system? I don’t know.) What would happen if all the major hypervisors had a clustered file system in common? How would that impact virtualization? [...] Would a clustered file system that worked equally well with Hyper-V, ESX, and XenServer make any difference? What sort of flexibility or interoperability might it bring?

You can check out the blog post here; feel free to give him some feedback.

We’re happy to feature Scott as our IT blogger of the week! You can visit his blog here.

http://blog.scottlowe.org/

IT Knowledge Exchange Community Update for 02/12/09

Here is what’s happening in our community lately:

• Knowledge Points Amazon giveaway
• “Best Questions” t-shirt winners
• Featured IT blogger
• Featured questions
• Featured blog posts
• New community blogs
• Messages from the TechTarget network

Continued »

Is there an Amazon gift card in your future? Only your Knowledge Points will tell.

It’s that time again — a chance to win an Amazon.com gift certificate based on your activity in the IT Knowledge Exchange community! Remember: the more you ask, answer and discuss questions, the more Knowledge Points you will earn.

The top 10 most active members from today (February 11th), until end of business on Friday, March 13th that reach the following Knowledge Point levels will be eligible for:

• 3000+ Knowledge Points: $200.00 Amazon gift card
• 2000+ Knowledge Points: $150.00 Amazon gift card
• 1000+ Knowledge Points: $75.00 Amazon gift card
• 500+ Knowledge Points: $50.00 Amazon gift card

Please remember: Knowledge Points will only be rewarded for actual questions, answers and discussions that are relevant to the site. We will be reviewing all contributions prior to announcing the winners.

Be sure to check out our Contest Rules, and then ask, answer and discuss questions to earn as many Knowledge Points as you can!

Not sure where to begin? Refer to this blog post for links to all categories of unanswered questions. And remember — we need your smart questions just as much as we need smart answers!

Good luck, and happy posting!

Community Manager