ITKE

Redeem your Knowledge Points for an Amazon.com gift card!

We would like to thank all of our IT Knowledge Exchange members for their hard work on the site this year by offering the opportunity to “cash out” on their total Knowledge Points earned. Every 1,000 Knowledge Points earned through December 15th, 2009 is eligible for a $10 Amazon gift card.

Remember: You don’t just have to answer questions to earn Knowledge Points! Submitting good questions and thoughtful discussion points can also bump up your Knowledge Points total just as well. Remember your Knowledge Points earned are:

• 5 points for asking a question
• 10 points for discussing
• 15 points for answering

Not sure where to start? Visit this blog post with links to all unanswered questions.

Cashout details:

• All members with a cumulative 1,000 Knowledge Points or more on the date of their cashout are eligible.

• Participating members must e-mail us at  contactus at itknowledgeexchange.com by the end of business on December 15th in order to qualify for the cashout. In order for us to correctly process the e-mail, you must include your handle.

• Cashout period runs from today, October 14th, through the end of business on December 15th. We will award gift cards to eligible members based on their total accumulated Knowledge Point values at the time of their e-mail. This means you can e-mail us today to redeem your points, or wait and earn additional Knowledge Points through December 15th.

Restrictions:

• Only members in Amazon-eligible locations can participate.

• We cannot “round up” — if you e-mail us and your Knowledge Points currently stand at 4,995, we can only award you for the 4,000. Keep this in mind as you plan your time to redeem!

• All participants will be reviewed for post relevancy. “Gaming the system” by posting irrelevant comments will be seen by our admins, and you will be disqualified from redeeming.

• Each participating member may only e-mail us once — we cannot award additional gift cards for participation after the member has chosen to redeem his points.

Your moderators at IT Knowledge Exchange are very excited to launch this giveaway — we look forward to hearing from you!

Thanks,

Community Manager

The IT Blog Top 10: Oct. 8, 2009

10. Removing old hardware after a P2V conversion Eric Siebert shares a long-held best practice regarding old server management.

9. Massive phishing scheme affects Microsoft Hotmail accounts Rob Westervelt breaks down the latest news on the Microsoft Hotmail phishing attacks.

8. Using VRDP to view VirtualBox virtual machines remotely Rick Vanover walks through Sun’s xVM VirtualBox’s ability to tap into VRDP remote viewing.

7. Ellison rails against the Cloud Larry Ellison once again took aim at the marketing hype surrounding cloud computing, this time likening it to “water vapor.” Barney Beal brings readers the story.

6. Colons and semicolons Ivy Wigmore offers a brief overview of two vexing punctuation marks. Continued »

The most-watched IT questions this week: Oct. 6, 2009

Once again, we’ve compiled the 10 most watched questions on ITKE, and found some great discussions on topics ranging from virtualization to disaster recovery to disaster recovery. Go answer a question now and
you could win a TV, or check out the rest of the top 10 on the Community Blog:

1. How to remove duplicate row in multi joined table? tops the list, asked by CompEng and answered by a host of eager assistants.

2. Should we tell our users we’re doing disaster recovery testing? was answered by MeandYou, TechnoChic and CharlieBrowne.

3. Count/Sum Question was asked by Chhmusic, and was answered by MeandYou, Calosdl, and kccrosser.

4. To Specify the location for New Column in Oracle was asked by Maheshmamu and was answered by kccrosser, zagrim, mrdenny and others.

5. Server Rack best practices was posed by a reader and answered by Mrdenny and Carlosdl. Continued »

The IT Blog Top 10: Oct. 1, 2009

10. Choosing a block size when creating VMFS datastores Eric Siebert provides a guide detailing how to choose a block size for VMFS datastores.

9. Using VRDP to view VirtualBox virtual machines remotely Rick Vanover walks through Sun’s xVM VirtualBox’s ability to tap into VRDP remote viewing.

8. Does Larry care about Oracle customers? When it comes to his company, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is clearly ‘in it to win it’ - but for whom? Shayna Garlick investigates.

7. How to allow the root user to log in to VMware ESX Server with SSH David Davis’ how-to on allowing users into a VMware server via SSH works wonders for the virtualization crowd.

6. Ellison rails against the Cloud Larry Ellison once again took aim at the marketing hype surrounding cloud computing, this time likening it to “water vapor.” Barney Beal brings readers the story. Continued »

The most-watched IT questions this week: Sept. 29, 2009

Curious as to what the most popular IT questions and answers are on ITKE? So were we! So we’ve been watching the watchlists, so to speak, to bring you the top 10 questions, answers and discussions at the top of user watchlists this week:

1. Export Oracle data to Excel tops the list with great responses by Jjohannsen, Randym and Kccrosser.

2. How to remove duplicate row in multi joined table? was asked by CompEng and received a lot of thoughtful, fruitful discussion from all over.

3. Why are 4 virtual CPU’s the limitation? was asked during our Microsoft Virtualization chat, and was answered by Edwin Yuen.

4. I LOVE Vmware! Can you convince me to switch to MSFT? is another Microsoft Virtualization chat question, also answered by Edwin Yuen while Kevin Beaver adds his two cents.

5. Complete System Backup SQL Server was posed by a reader and answered by Mrdenny.

6. If running two SQL Server db in two VMs, I should purchase two db servers? was asked during our Virtualization Chat, and answered by EdwinYuen and Mrdenny.

7. Count/Sum Question was posed by Chhmusic and answered by Kccrosser, Carlosdl and Meandyou.

8. Nominate a member for our latest Panasonic flatscreen giveaway is the nomination form for our latest contest.

9. SQL Mismatch in From Statement was asked by CompEng and answered by Carlosdl.

10.  mainframe db2 - get current month and year was posed by rulala and answered by Meandyou.

Go ahead and ask a question yourself, and maybe you’ll see your name up here next week!

The IT Blog Top 10: Sept. 24, 2009

10. Social networking, real-time data feeds — where does that leave IT? The District of Columbia has won the 2009 Innovations in American Government Award in Urban Policy for its Data Feeds: Democratization of Government Data project. Kristen Caretta explains what lessons IT could learn.

9. What’s the future of XML? Just ask Jack Vaughn, who breaks it down.

8. The System i five-layer cake: Yum Mark Fontecchio cuts readers a digestible slice of IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will’s explanation of the iSeries architecture.

7. IBM makes System i rebate more reasonable IBM has revised an ISV-based program for Power Systems users that expands the ability for them to get a rebate, and Mark Fontecchio breaks down why the changes matter.

6. How to allow the root user to log in to VMware ESX Server with SSH David Davis’ how-to on allowing users into a VMware server via SSH works wonders for the virtualization crowd.

Continued »

Win a 42″ Flatscreen Panasonic television in our latest contest

If you’re familiar with IT Knowledge Exchange, you may know that many of our contests revolve around Knowledge Points, which are earned by asking, answering and discussing questions in the community. In our biggest giveaway ever, we’re doing things a little differently, based on quality of contributions rather than quantity, nominated and judged by your peers.

From today through Friday, November 20th, a team of community managers (along with Michael, Sean and Jenny) will be reading through the community and taking note of the following:

• Nominated members (see below)

• Detailed questions that are well-tagged and include specific information on hardware/software makes and models, error messages, and any other information that will help the question get answered
• Thorough, well thought out answers that include plenty of information to help the user toward a solution
• Thought-provoking discussions that keep the conversation going

We have set up a community feedback page here where any member can nominate another member — everyone is involved in this process.

*Contest Update 09/23: We will be giving away five $20 Amazon gift cards at random to members who nominate others on the official nomination page.*

When the contest period ends, your team of judges will deliberate and choose one user who best represents a “star IT Knowledge Exchange community member”. The winner will receive a 42″ Panasonic flatscreen television. Due to shipping restrictions, only US, UK and Canada residents are eligible.

Good luck to all who plan on participating, and remember — quality is king.

Community Manager

Featured IT Blogger: Michael Hay of The Storage Muse

Michael Hay of The Storage Muse has plenty to say about enterprise storage — he’s an R&D strategist at Hitachi Data Systems, working to understand customer needs for storage solutions. In The Storage Muse, he’s recently written on LUN migration and file-level migration, as well as the Google File System. Be sure to visit Michael’s blog today.

The IT Blog Top 10: Sept. 17, 2009

10. Standard Server 2003 Migration to SBS 2008 Part 3 Roger Crawford’s server migration guide has been a helpful resource as IT professionals navigate the treacherous upgrade process.

9. Three new free administration tools from Vizioncore Eric Siebert shares three free tools that can remove headaches from the life of a VMWare administrator.

8. Choosing a block size when creating VMFS datastores Eric Siebert provides some clear, helpful guidelines for creating VMFS datastores.

7. Looking for low-cost business processes? Check out GE WorkOut and FTD Karen Guglielmo suggests looking to some unlikely inspirations as companies look for business process benefits without Six Sigma’s price tag.

6. Using VRDP to view VirtualBox virtual machines remotely Rick Vanover’s post dives into some of the finer points of using Sun’s xVM VirtualBox. Continued »

The IT Blog Top 10: Sept. 10, 2009

As part of a new feature on the Community Blog, each week I’ll be doing a run down of the 10 most popular blog posts over the previous week, in case you were wondering what your peers were reading or a hot topic somehow missed your radar. Still think we missed something? Send me an e-mail at Michael@ITKnowledgeExchange.com and let me know, or better yet, request your own blog, hosted right here on ITKnowledgeExchange.

10. Bob Cancilla on the future of System i One of the Sytem i’s biggest fans also shares a dose of hard reality as he sees it.

9. The EU fiddles while Sun burns Ed Scannell takes the European Union to task for kicking Sun while they’re down.

8. How to allow the root user to log in to VMware ESX Server with SSH An old post but hot this week, David Davis explains a tricky procedure in clear terms.

7. Importing VMDK disk files into Sun xVM VirtualBox Rick Vanover (VCP, MCITP,MCTS, MCSA) offers another how-to, fresh off the presses and quite in demand.

6. Swine flu and business continuity planning resources Anne McCrory combs through the web to bring together the best resources on preparing for an H1N1 outbreak.

Read on for the top 5 … Continued »