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Cloud computing, security, mobile, storage…these topics were all included in ITKE’s top blog posts for April. Find out what our bloggers were saying about each topic.

• Facebook Home on Android is a non-starter by Ron Miller (View From Above)

• Microsoft recalls security update from April Patch Tuesday by Toni Boger (The Windows Server Notebook)

• Kaspersky report shows why you need to keep your software up to date by Tony Bradley (The Security Detail)

• Storage playing key role in entertainment industry by Randy Kerns (Storage Soup)

• Disruption catches up with everyone, even Apple by Ron Miller (View From Above)

• Project secrets of Downton Abbey by Matt Heusser (Unchartered Waters)

• Is “build your own cloud” the new IT gym membership by Brian Gracely (From Silos to Services: Cloud Computing for the Enterprise)

• What do enterprises expect from OpenStack by Brian Gracely (From Silos to Services: Cloud Computing for the Enterprise)

• Nimble Storage adds reference architecture, new level of analytics by Dave Raffo (Storage Soup)

• Profiling the best Exchange Server professionals (April 2013) – Jeff Guillet by Matt Gervais (The Microsoft Messaging Exchange)

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It was the Ron Miller and Matt Heusser show as several of their posts made ITKE’s top blog posts for March. So what were they (and others) writing about?

• Interview with a digital migrant: Meet John Hunter by Matt Heusser (Unchartered Waters)

• Another push for HTML5 mobile adoption by Maxine Giza (SOA Talk)

• Oracle reports losses as pressure mounts from cloud and open source alternatives by Ron Miller (View From Above)

• With so much fragmenting, is Android still a single OS? by Ron Miller (View From Above)

• Earning the $16k/year it takes to live remote by Matt Heusser (Unchartered Waters)

• Of Marissa Mayer, VPN logos, telework bans, tempests and teapots by Matt Heusser (Unchartered Waters)

• Cisco wants to breathe new life into the desk phone by Gina Narcisi (Unified Communications Nation)

• Your cloud storage service is looking for child porn in your files by Sharon Fisher (Yottabytes: Storage and Disaster Recovery)

• So many nice phones, but Apple and Samsung still rule by Ron Miller (View From Above)

• How ‘free’ software can cost more than it’s worth by Robin Miller (Cheap Computing)

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February may be a short month, but it wasn’t short on blog posts at ITKnowledgeExchange. Take a look at the top blog posts from this past month!

• Data migrations suck. Here’s a survey to prove it by Sharon Fisher (Yottabytes: Storage and Disaster Recovery)

• Where jobs are headed and what you can do: An intervew by Matt Heusser (Unchartered Waters)

• Poor pathetic HP way too late to Android tablet market by Ron Miller (View From Above)

• MS Office 2013 licensing follies by Ed Tittel (Windows Enterprise Desktop)

• Microsoft has massive Patch Tuesday planned for next week by Tony Bradley (The Security Detail)

• The ultimate Windows 8 upgrade may be Windows 7 by Robin Miller (Cheap Computing)

• The golden age of cloud storage by Ron Miller (View From Above)

• Cut big data down to small data and save big bucks by Robin Miller (Cheap Computing)

• BlackBerry isn’t dead, but it’s still dying by Tony Bradley (Tech Strategy Trends)

• CommVault eyes expansion with Simpana 10 by Dave Raffo (Storage Soup)

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Get your pencils ready, IT students: It’s time for another pop quiz! This week we’re going to challenge you with several questions on SAP products. See if you can answer any (or all) of the questions below and we’ll give out 150 Knowledge Points for each approved answer. Good luck!

1. If a user doesn’t have administrator rights, can a user access screens to change the default printer settings in SAP? 
2. How can a user check the released PO history using a SAP T-Code? 
3. A user is creating a move plan using REORMP but keeps getting an error message when deactivating it. What’s the fix? 
4. In SAP MDM, what does the purple pushpin icon mean and how can you disable it? 
5. Can you set up master data to close work orders when a % of the total has been issued on specific components?
6. Is it possible for a user to open an archived PO again? 
7. Can a user print a purchase order by using the user id?
8. Using SAP ECC 6.0, how can you get field labels when you’re viewing data in tables?
9. Is there a transaction that will show order changes for users who don’t have access to SAP reports? 
10. How can a user run PO reports using U.S. dollars only in SAP MM?

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Another month has come and gone here at ITKnowledgeExchange and so it’s time to look back at the top blog posts from January!

• VMware to cut jobs, realign products in 2013 by Beth Pariseau (The Virtualization Room)
• NOLOCK is not a turbo button by Denny Cherry (SQL Server with Mr. Denny)
• YouTube IT video of the week: Kim Dotcom’s Mega by Michael Tidmarsh (Enterprise IT Watch Blog)
• Nine free and easy ways to look your best in a video interview or chat by Robin Miller (Cheap Computing)
• Apple’s finally revealed their brilliant plan to destroy the PC industry by Onuora Amobi (Windows News and Updates)
• It’s mobile’s world now and PC just has to get over it by Ron Miller (View From Above)
• A new twist on offshore IT by Matt Heusser (Unchartered Waters)
• Riverbed and Silver Peak compete in the courthouse by Tessa Parmenter (Window on WANs)
• Four requirements for independence by Matt Heusser (Unchartered Waters)
• BlackBerry scored with BB10 line, but game was over by Ron Miller (View From Above)

Great news, ITKnowledgeExchange members! We’ve recently released a fix that greatly improves the display of code on our pages. When you want to post code in a question, answer, or comment, use the [code button (appearing in the top right-hand corner of the text editor), paste your code in the box, and watch the magic happen. Your code will appear in an easy-to-read, highlighted format that keeps all spacing and formatting intact.

Make sure to try out our newest update and let us know if you have any questions!

This has been a great year for ITKnowledgeExchange as we welcomed many new bloggers. As the year draws to a close, it’s time to take a look back at the top blog posts of 2012!

1. Transformer Pad/Prime Infinity release date by Nathan Simon (The Real and Virtual Adventures of Nathan the IT Guy)
2. Resolving MySQL error 1146: “table doesn’t exist” when doing backup by Eric Hansen (I.T. Security and Linux Administration)
3. NRPE: Could not complete SSL handshake by Eric Hansen (I.T. Security and Linux Administration)
4. Oracle declares war on cloud and open source by Ron Miller (View from Above)
5. Oracle the clear leader in $24 billion RDBMS market by Mark Fontecchio (Eye on Oracle)
6. Buying a touchscreen for Windows 8, episode 1  by Ed Tittel (Windows Enterprise Desktop)
7. Node.js: Bubbling up from JavaScript by Brein Matturro (SOA Talk)
8. Interesting fallout from Windows update KB2762895 by Ed Tittel (Windows Enterprise Desktop)
9. Interesting Windows 8 issues on Lenovo X220 tablet by Ed Tittel (Windows Enterprise Desktop)
10. Cisco ASA 9.x – Coming soon by Joshua Wood (TechStop)

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It’s been a great year full of questions, answers, discussions and more here at ITKnowledgeExchange, and I want to thank you all for your contributions. We’re looking forward to much more to come in 2013, with new site features like improved code formatting and a major new project that will further integrate the community with the extensive TechTarget network and let more people see all your great contributions (more on this soon). I’m really excited about how this site will grow and change over the next several months, and I hope you are, too.

Over the next week, we’ll be sharing some of our favorite content from the year, but for now, I want to point to a few recent changes we’ve made over the past month or so. (I won’t call them “gifts,” but I can’t stop you from doing so.)

• If you’re wondering how your activity compares to other site members, you can now check this using the ‘badge rank’ link on your profile page. By checking out the Linux badge ranks, for example (http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/badges/linux/), we see that carlosdl has the top spot, with rechil not far behind at #2. You can view the rest of the topics in the menu on the left side of the page. I can already feel the competitive juices starting to flow…

• The tag alerts function should now be working properly again. When logged in, your e-mail address should be showing in the box on the right sidebar on the homepage where it says “Subscribe to Alerts”; click the Subscribe button and you’ll be able to sign up for notifications on the topics you care about (you’ll get them in a daily digest).

• We’ve updated the featured questions box that shows on the homepage. This is where we post some of the most challenging and/or most interesting items that are submitted so you don’t have to hunt for them.  (We also post some tough unanswered questions in our IT quizzes, so be sure to check those out.)

• We’ve started up a series profiling our members and bloggers over on the ITKE Community Blog. We talked with all-time points leader Tom Liotta recently, and we’ll be contacting you all down the road so you can get your moment in the sun. Watch out for an email from Michael Tidmarsh, our Assistant Community Manager, who will be taking over a lot of these kinds of communications.

• We’ve also welcomed several new contributors to our blogs. Brian Gracely has been doing a great job on his new blog, From Silos to Services: Cloud Computing for the Enterprise. Longtime blogger Robin Miller is now covering tons of ways to save money (especially during the holidays!) on his new Cheap Computing blog. AS/400 expert John Anderson, who you may have seen around the forums, has started up a new blog covering, appropriately, AS/400 and IBM i Tutorials. And ITKE veteran James Bingham (aka harisheldon) is now gathering Tech Support Horror Stories. Make sure to check out all these blogs and offer your comments as you have them.

As always, if you have questions or concerns about something that’s happening in the community, or ideas for how to improve things, please don’t hesitate to contact me or Michael.

Thanks again for all that you do, and have a great holiday!

Ben

Rich Castagna (@RichCastagnaTT), Editorial Director of the Storage Media Group along with our Editorial Events team (@TT_Edit_Events), will be hosting the #SDSF2012 TweetChat 2 part series, kicking off next Friday, November 2^nd from 1:00-1:30 EST in the #SDSF2012 TweetChat Room.

We’re thrilled to have conference speakers participate in the conversation! Here are the planned topics and some potential discussion questions:

Friday, November 2^nd, from 1:00-1:30 EST

Speakers Participating

- Dennis Martin (@Demartek)

- Jon Toigo (@JonToigo)

T1: Networking:

• In terms of Ethernet for storage networking, how much share does 10 Gigabit Ethernet have at this point, compared to Gigabit Ethernet?
• How is that impacting adoption of FCoE?
• InfiniBand has been getting more press recently among the storage-centric tech press. What’s happening there?
• What about Fibre Channel: Carol Sliwa did a story a few months ago citing research from Dell Oro group that found that’s predicting that 77% of FC switch shipments will go to 8 Gbps FC this year and that in 2013, 8 Gbps and 16 Gbps should split the FC switch market about evenly. What type of company really needs 16 Gbps FC?

T2: Infrastruggle:

• Storage metrics:  When designing storage systems, I’ve always considered performance metrics, like IOPs and RPOs. Should I be adding energy-centric metrics to the mix?
• Going green: I’m trying to evaluate vendor pitches from companies saying they are “green”—what’s a good rule of thumb? Should I be looking strictly at power costs?
• Vendors and capacity: Along those lines, I’m focused on IOPs but my vendor is focused on capacity, it seems. Why is that?
• Thin provisioning: My vendor keeps talking about “thin provisioning”—is this really important? Do I need this automated?

Monday, November 5^th, from 1:00-1:30 EST

Speaker Participating
-Brian Madden (@brianmadden)
T1: VDI

• We know that storage has a lot to do with the success or failure of a VDI project. But it seems to be a bigger impediment than people expected five or so years ago when we first started hearing about VDI. Why is that?
• What are the companies with successful VDI projects doing right around storage? Or, what are the others doing wrong?
• In your session at Storage Decisions, you’ll be talking about why SSD (typically used to prevent boot storms) doesn’t fix the VDI storage problem. Is the issue that SSD isn’t sufficient to address boot storms? Or that other problems exist that SSD can’t fix?

T2: End user perspectives:

• Have you attempted a VDI project and had to abandon it because of storage?
• For those of you with what you consider a successful VDI implementation, what kind of ROI have you seen from it?
• What problems have you confronted that you didn’t expect?

Reminder: #SDSF2012 TweetChats are a marketing-free environment! Join the chat to connect, learn and get excited for our upcoming Storage Decisions San Francisco Conference, but please do not post product-specific information.

It’s easy to join the Twitter conversation by logging in to the #SDSF2012 TweetChat Room, which automatically keeps you in the conversation by tagging all tweets with the #SDSF2012 hash tag. If you are unable to access the TweetChat room, simply search in Twitter for #SDSF2012 and tag your tweets with #SDSF2012 so they can be seen by everyone else.

If you have any questions, please contact Maria Gomez, Editorial Events Associate at TechTarget, at mgomez@techtarget.com.

SOA image via Shutterstock

It seems that more and more organizations are using lightweight protocols such as REST (representational state transfer) to best leverage their SOA infrastructure. If you’re one of them, you’re going to need to know what REST offers as compared to the more traditional SOAP. SOA with REST: Principles, Patterns & Constraints for Building Enterprise Solutions with REST, a new book from Pearson/Prentice Hall Professional, could be a good first step. We’ve got an excerpt of the book up on the IT Bookworm blog.

Want the whole thing? Just tell us in the comments why you’re considering REST and you’ll be entered to win a copy of the e-book. For more on improving your SOA, visit the SOA Talk blog.