Phil Malinak

Security is top of mind for most organizations today. In many IT departments, the security conversation has been going on since two computers were connected onto the same network. The spectrum of approaches goes between “let nothing out or nothing in and we will be fine” or “let somewhere just shy of everything out and…

My team consists of people who carry out their day-to-day business responsibilities as individuals. They talk with customers, make notes about the conversation, write up business proposals and create paperwork that may eventually become a statement of work document for a services engagement. We each keep our documents in locations we can easily access from…

In my previous post, I mentioned the potential situation of zombies within your organization. That is, paying for servers and not using them. Ok, now we know there is a challenge, so what is the solution? When confronted with a zombie server situation, you have two main options for addressing it. You can either drop…

Let us consider the origin of a server. They primarily start with an original equipment manufacturer (OEM). It is a base model, usually with bare bones equipment in it to power up and support any low-end software installed on it. From here, the options explode with what you can do. Load up all the bays…

In a world of automation and set it and forget it IT resources, there is something quaint about physically handling a piece of equipment nightly, especially equipment based on technology that was invented nearly 70 years ago, back in 1951. What equipment am I talking about? Nope, I’m not talking about the phone system or…

Microsoft Azure: You’re doing it wrong! With a statement like that, you might think that I will now distill my infinite wisdom and experience with Microsoft products and patiently explain how to use Azure “correctly.” Nope. In truth, part of the beauty of Azure is that there is no right or wrong way to use…