[encoded data, 4484 characters]\" alt=\"vCOPS\" width=\"223\" height=\"385\" />\r\n\r\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong><em>1. We need to do more with what we have – How can we use the resources we have more efficiently? </em></strong></span>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Reactive Approach &amp; Challenges</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Calculate the consolidation ratio of VMs to Hosts - do the math, check back often, hope utilization doesn’t increase, and repeat. Maintain a spreadsheet or other documentation to keep track of things like CPU or RAM installed and try to correlate that with the performance of a resource in a VM.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The more workloads you can consolidate on existing resources, the more money you can save. Understanding the current and possible consolidation ratios will drive the business decisions for the acquisition of resources in the future. Change is <em>encouraged</em> in today’s virtual environments. Try keeping a static inventory of your VMs in a shared pool of resources and you’ll always be one step behind with DRS and Storage DRS migrating those VMs from resource to resource.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>The Proactive Approach &amp; Solutions</strong></span></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Have plenty of CPU but short on memory? Easily increase your consolidation ratios by quickly comparing your current consolidation ratio to a recommended ratio based on your specific resources and workload. Advanced reporting and analytics can identify starved and over provisioned VMs, easily allowing you to make resource entitlements with accuracy and confidence.</p>\r\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"> <strong><em>2. We just upgraded our infrastructure - When will our resources run out?</em></strong></span>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><em></em><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Reactive Approach &amp; Challenges</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Using static alerts, you’ll have to wait for an alert to notify you when capacity reaches a threshold, or you can check in monthly, weekly, or daily on the specific resource you want to monitor.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The threat of not having enough resources to support a workload could be just as devastating to an environment as an outage. Workloads change, new workloads are created, and old workloads are decommissioned. Keeping up with these changes in a virtual environment is a daunting task.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Proactive Approach &amp; Solutions</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Capacity planning is fully integrated with vCOPS.  Know how many days you have until a resource like CPU or memory will be depleted, and quickly understand what resource is holding you back from further growth. Mitigate the risk of change and simulate what will happen to capacity and performance if you add or remove physical or virtual resources like a host or data store with the “what-if” scenario planner.<strong><em></em></strong></p>\r\n<img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"data:image/png;base64,[encoded data, 32988 characters]\" alt=\"\" width=\"227\" height=\"311\" />\r\n\r\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong><em>3. An application owner is requesting additional resources - What’s a normal workload for this application, and how do I know if they need additional resources?</em></strong></span>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Reactive Approach &amp; Challenges</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Check the performance history by going to each individual resource (VM, Host, Cluster and Storage).</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Set a static alert (or keep the default) to notify you when utilization of a resource reaches a specific threshold.  Respond to the alert after the threshold has been reached – and to the phone calls of frustrated customers. Static metrics and measurements create unnecessary administrative overhead. Set enough metrics and you’ll soon have a full-time job for one of your employees. Static metrics can only tell part of the story – they can’t tell you when CPU drops too low or tell you when you’re experiencing high utilization for an otherwise slow time like Saturday evening at 8 PM.<strong>  </strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Proactive Approach &amp; Solutions</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Dynamic alerts learn your environment and know that Tuesday morning your reporting database will be pegged out for an hour from before the Staff Meeting and relatively quiet the rest of the week. vCOPS learns what normal usage is – it learns the highs and lows for a resource and alerts you to the anomalies of performance, and the stress in your environment.</p>\r\nAs you can see, vCOPS takes virtual infrastructure management to a whole new level of easy. Whether your environment consists of 50 or 5000 virtual machines, or whether your infrastructure is on premise or hosted in the cloud, vCenter Operations Manager brings control back where it belongs and thrusts you into a leadership position of proactivity.\r\n\r\nLet us know your thoughts and experiences with vCOPS in the comments below!','Hey IT Leaders – Would You Rather Be Proactive or Reactive?','','inherit','open','open','','7277-revision-11','','','2012-09-04 11:56:32','2012-09-04 15:56:32','',7277,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/7277-revision-11',0,'revision','',0),(7290,40,'2012-09-04 11:59:17','2012-09-04 15:59:17','It’s difficult to notice when something is bad when you don’t know what good looks like.\r\n\r\nWhen it comes to managing a <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/what-we-do/services/cloud-services\">complex virtual environment</a> with many inter dependencies, understanding the health, capacity and efficiency of each resource is nearly impossible. Luckily, VMware is helping IT professionals understand both the <em>good </em>and the <em>bad </em>by allowing them to be much more proactive with the release of <a href=\"http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vcenter-operations-management/overview.html\">vCenter Operations Manager</a> (vCOPS).\r\n\r\nJust last week at VMworld 2012, VMware announced the <a href=\"http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-vmworld-vcloud-suite-082712.html\" target=\"_blank\">VMware vCloud® Suite 5.1</a>, which allows customers to bundle the vCenter Operations Management Suite along with many other products at purchase time. Now we can easily find out what <em>good</em> looks like inside our virtual environments – no matter where they are in the cloud.\r\n\r\n<span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>How It Works</strong></span>\r\n\r\nMost of us understand that VMware vCenter Server manages resources like Clusters, Hosts, Virtual Machines and Datastores. Each resource has its own counters (performance metrics) that it sends to the vCenter Server. vCOPS takes the thousands of counters that vCenter receives every second and then analyses and transforms them into easy to understand metrics.  These metrics are then used by badges to score your environment on its Health, Risk, and Efficiency.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"data:image/png;base64,[encoded data, 34604 characters]\" alt=\"\" width=\"498\" height=\"74\" />\r\n\r\n<span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>The Transformation</strong></span>\r\n\r\nVirtualization and the migration of workloads to the Cloud has not only changed the way we provision and service IT, it has changed the way we manage it. Traditional Tools create a manual, reactive approach and can only manage IT in their separate silos. vCOPS monitors your compute, storage and networking environment by analyzing the counters from each resource. This allows vSphere Admins to view their entire virtual infrastructure from a single pane.\r\n\r\nLet’s take a look at a few common questions and scenarios and compare the traditional approach, the challenges faced, and then the vCOPS approach to managing a virtualized infrastructure.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"alignnone\" src=\"data:image/png;base64,[encoded data, 60824 characters]\" alt=\"vCOPS\" width=\"223\" height=\"385\" />\r\n\r\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong><em>1. We need to do more with what we have – How can we use the resources we have more efficiently? </em></strong></span>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Reactive Approach &amp; Challenges</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Calculate the consolidation ratio of VMs to Hosts - do the math, check back often, hope utilization doesn’t increase, and repeat. Maintain a spreadsheet or other documentation to keep track of things like CPU or RAM installed and try to correlate that with the performance of a resource in a VM.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The more workloads you can consolidate on existing resources, the more money you can save. Understanding the current and possible consolidation ratios will drive the business decisions for the acquisition of resources in the future. Change is <em>encouraged</em> in today’s virtual environments. Try keeping a static inventory of your VMs in a shared pool of resources and you’ll always be one step behind with DRS and Storage DRS migrating those VMs from resource to resource.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>The Proactive Approach &amp; Solutions</strong></span></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Have plenty of CPU but short on memory? Easily increase your consolidation ratios by quickly comparing your current consolidation ratio to a recommended ratio based on your specific resources and workload. Advanced reporting and analytics can identify starved and over provisioned VMs, easily allowing you to make resource entitlements with accuracy and confidence.</p>\r\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"> <strong><em>2. We just upgraded our infrastructure - When will our resources run out?</em></strong></span>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><em></em><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Reactive Approach &amp; Challenges</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Using static alerts, you’ll have to wait for an alert to notify you when capacity reaches a threshold, or you can check in monthly, weekly, or daily on the specific resource you want to monitor.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The threat of not having enough resources to support a workload could be just as devastating to an environment as an outage. Workloads change, new workloads are created, and old workloads are decommissioned. Keeping up with these changes in a virtual environment is a daunting task.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Proactive Approach &amp; Solutions</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Capacity planning is fully integrated with vCOPS.  Know how many days you have until a resource like CPU or memory will be depleted, and quickly understand what resource is holding you back from further growth. Mitigate the risk of change and simulate what will happen to capacity and performance if you add or remove physical or virtual resources like a host or data store with the “what-if” scenario planner.<strong><em></em></strong></p>\r\n<img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"data:image/png;base64,[encoded data, 32988 characters]\" alt=\"\" width=\"227\" height=\"311\" />\r\n\r\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong><em>3. An application owner is requesting additional resources - What’s a normal workload for this application, and how do I know if they need additional resources?</em></strong></span>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Reactive Approach &amp; Challenges</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Check the performance history by going to each individual resource (VM, Host, Cluster and Storage).</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Set a static alert (or keep the default) to notify you when utilization of a resource reaches a specific threshold.  Respond to the alert after the threshold has been reached – and to the phone calls of frustrated customers. Static metrics and measurements create unnecessary administrative overhead. Set enough metrics and you’ll soon have a full-time job for one of your employees. Static metrics can only tell part of the story – they can’t tell you when CPU drops too low or tell you when you’re experiencing high utilization for an otherwise slow time like Saturday evening at 8 PM.<strong>  </strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Proactive Approach &amp; Solutions</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Dynamic alerts learn your environment and know that Tuesday morning your reporting database will be pegged out for an hour from before the Staff Meeting and relatively quiet the rest of the week. vCOPS learns what normal usage is – it learns the highs and lows for a resource and alerts you to the anomalies of performance, and the stress in your environment.</p>\r\nAs you can see, vCOPS takes virtual infrastructure management to a whole new level of easy. Whether your environment consists of 50 or 5000 virtual machines, or whether your infrastructure is on premise or hosted in the cloud, vCenter Operations Manager brings control back where it belongs and thrusts you into a leadership position of proactivity.\r\n\r\nLet us know your thoughts and experiences with vCOPS in the comments below!','Hey IT Leaders – Would You Rather Be Proactive or Reactive?','','inherit','open','open','','7277-revision-13','','','2012-09-04 11:59:17','2012-09-04 15:59:17','',7277,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/7277-revision-13',0,'revision','',0),(7291,40,'2012-09-04 12:00:03','2012-09-04 16:00:03','It’s difficult to notice when something is bad when you don’t know what good looks like.\r\n\r\nWhen it comes to managing a <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/what-we-do/services/cloud-services\">complex virtual environment</a> with many inter dependencies, understanding the health, capacity and efficiency of each resource is nearly impossible. Luckily, VMware is helping IT professionals understand both the <em>good </em>and the <em>bad </em>by allowing them to be much more proactive with the release of <a href=\"http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vcenter-operations-management/overview.html\">vCenter Operations Manager</a> (vCOPS).\r\n\r\nJust last week at VMworld 2012, VMware announced the <a href=\"http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-vmworld-vcloud-suite-082712.html\" target=\"_blank\">VMware vCloud® Suite 5.1</a>, which allows customers to bundle the vCenter Operations Management Suite along with many other products at purchase time. Now we can easily find out what <em>good</em> looks like inside our virtual environments – no matter where they are in the cloud.\r\n\r\n<span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>How It Works</strong></span>\r\n\r\nMost of us understand that VMware vCenter Server manages resources like Clusters, Hosts, Virtual Machines and Datastores. Each resource has its own counters (performance metrics) that it sends to the vCenter Server. vCOPS takes the thousands of counters that vCenter receives every second and then analyses and transforms them into easy to understand metrics.  These metrics are then used by badges to score your environment on its Health, Risk, and Efficiency.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"data:image/png;base64,[encoded data, 34604 characters]\" alt=\"\" width=\"498\" height=\"74\" />\r\n\r\n<span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>The Transformation</strong></span>\r\n\r\nVirtualization and the migration of workloads to the Cloud has not only changed the way we provision and service IT, it has changed the way we manage it. Traditional Tools create a manual, reactive approach and can only manage IT in their separate silos. vCOPS monitors your compute, storage and networking environment by analyzing the counters from each resource. This allows vSphere Admins to view their entire virtual infrastructure from a single pane.\r\n\r\nLet’s take a look at a few common questions and scenarios and compare the traditional approach, the challenges faced, and then the vCOPS approach to managing a virtualized infrastructure.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"alignnone\" src=\"data:image/png;base64,[encoded data, 60824 characters]\" alt=\"vCOPS\" width=\"223\" height=\"385\" />\r\n\r\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong><em>1. We need to do more with what we have – How can we use the resources we have more efficiently? </em></strong></span>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Reactive Approach &amp; Challenges</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Calculate the consolidation ratio of VMs to Hosts - do the math, check back often, hope utilization doesn’t increase, and repeat. Maintain a spreadsheet or other documentation to keep track of things like CPU or RAM installed and try to correlate that with the performance of a resource in a VM.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The more workloads you can consolidate on existing resources, the more money you can save. Understanding the current and possible consolidation ratios will drive the business decisions for the acquisition of resources in the future. Change is <em>encouraged</em> in today’s virtual environments. Try keeping a static inventory of your VMs in a shared pool of resources and you’ll always be one step behind with DRS and Storage DRS migrating those VMs from resource to resource.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>The Proactive Approach &amp; Solutions</strong></span></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Have plenty of CPU but short on memory? Easily increase your consolidation ratios by quickly comparing your current consolidation ratio to a recommended ratio based on your specific resources and workload. Advanced reporting and analytics can identify starved and over provisioned VMs, easily allowing you to make resource entitlements with accuracy and confidence.</p>\r\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"> <strong><em>2. We just upgraded our infrastructure - When will our resources run out?</em></strong></span>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><em></em><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Reactive Approach &amp; Challenges</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Using static alerts, you’ll have to wait for an alert to notify you when capacity reaches a threshold, or you can check in monthly, weekly, or daily on the specific resource you want to monitor.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The threat of not having enough resources to support a workload could be just as devastating to an environment as an outage. Workloads change, new workloads are created, and old workloads are decommissioned. Keeping up with these changes in a virtual environment is a daunting task.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Proactive Approach &amp; Solutions</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Capacity planning is fully integrated with vCOPS.  Know how many days you have until a resource like CPU or memory will be depleted, and quickly understand what resource is holding you back from further growth. Mitigate the risk of change and simulate what will happen to capacity and performance if you add or remove physical or virtual resources like a host or data store with the “what-if” scenario planner.<strong><em></em></strong></p>\r\n<img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"data:image/png;base64,[encoded data, 32988 characters]\" alt=\"\" width=\"227\" height=\"311\" />\r\n\r\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong><em>3. An application owner is requesting additional resources - What’s a normal workload for this application, and how do I know if they need additional resources?</em></strong></span>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Reactive Approach &amp; Challenges</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Check the performance history by going to each individual resource (VM, Host, Cluster and Storage).</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Set a static alert (or keep the default) to notify you when utilization of a resource reaches a specific threshold.  Respond to the alert after the threshold has been reached – and to the phone calls of frustrated customers. Static metrics and measurements create unnecessary administrative overhead. Set enough metrics and you’ll soon have a full-time job for one of your employees. Static metrics can only tell part of the story – they can’t tell you when CPU drops too low or tell you when you’re experiencing high utilization for an otherwise slow time like Saturday evening at 8 PM.<strong>  </strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Proactive Approach &amp; Solutions</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Dynamic alerts learn your environment and know that Tuesday morning your reporting database will be pegged out for an hour from before the Staff Meeting and relatively quiet the rest of the week. vCOPS learns what normal usage is – it learns the highs and lows for a resource and alerts you to the anomalies of performance, and the stress in your environment.</p>\r\nAs you can see, vCOPS takes virtual infrastructure management to a whole new level of easy. Whether your environment consists of 50 or 5000 virtual machines, or whether your infrastructure is on premise or hosted in the cloud, vCenter Operations Manager brings control back where it belongs and thrusts you into a leadership position of proactivity.\r\n\r\nLet us know your thoughts and experiences with vCOPS in the comments below!','Hey IT Leaders – Would You Rather Be Proactive or Reactive?','','inherit','open','open','','7277-revision-14','','','2012-09-04 12:00:03','2012-09-04 16:00:03','',7277,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/7277-revision-14',0,'revision','',0),(7292,40,'2012-09-04 12:00:56','2012-09-04 16:00:56','It’s difficult to notice when something is bad when you don’t know what good looks like.\r\n\r\nWhen it comes to managing a <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/what-we-do/services/cloud-services\">complex virtual environment</a> with many inter dependencies, understanding the health, capacity and efficiency of each resource is nearly impossible. Luckily, VMware is helping IT professionals understand both the <em>good </em>and the <em>bad </em>by allowing them to be much more proactive with the release of <a href=\"http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vcenter-operations-management/overview.html\">vCenter Operations Manager</a> (vCOPS).\r\n\r\nJust last week at VMworld 2012, VMware announced the <a href=\"http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-vmworld-vcloud-suite-082712.html\" target=\"_blank\">VMware vCloud® Suite 5.1</a>, which allows customers to bundle the vCenter Operations Management Suite along with many other products at purchase time. Now we can easily find out what <em>good</em> looks like inside our virtual environments – no matter where they are in the cloud.\r\n\r\n<span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>How It Works</strong></span>\r\n\r\nMost of us understand that VMware vCenter Server manages resources like Clusters, Hosts, Virtual Machines and Datastores. Each resource has its own counters (performance metrics) that it sends to the vCenter Server. vCOPS takes the thousands of counters that vCenter receives every second and then analyses and transforms them into easy to understand metrics.  These metrics are then used by badges to score your environment on its Health, Risk, and Efficiency.\r\n\r\n<img src=\"data:image/png;base64,[encoded data, 34604 characters]\" alt=\"\" width=\"498\" height=\"74\" />\r\n\r\n<span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>The Transformation</strong></span>\r\n\r\nVirtualization and the migration of workloads to the Cloud has not only changed the way we provision and service IT, it has changed the way we manage it. Traditional Tools create a manual, reactive approach and can only manage IT in their separate silos. vCOPS monitors your compute, storage and networking environment by analyzing the counters from each resource. This allows vSphere Admins to view their entire virtual infrastructure from a single pane.\r\n\r\nLet’s take a look at a few common questions and scenarios and compare the traditional approach, the challenges faced, and then the vCOPS approach to managing a virtualized infrastructure.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"alignnone\" src=\"data:image/png;base64,[encoded data, 60824 characters]\" alt=\"vCOPS\" width=\"223\" height=\"385\" />\r\n\r\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong><em>1. We need to do more with what we have – How can we use the resources we have more efficiently? </em></strong></span>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Reactive Approach &amp; Challenges</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Calculate the consolidation ratio of VMs to Hosts - do the math, check back often, hope utilization doesn’t increase, and repeat. Maintain a spreadsheet or other documentation to keep track of things like CPU or RAM installed and try to correlate that with the performance of a resource in a VM.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The more workloads you can consolidate on existing resources, the more money you can save. Understanding the current and possible consolidation ratios will drive the business decisions for the acquisition of resources in the future. Change is <em>encouraged</em> in today’s virtual environments. Try keeping a static inventory of your VMs in a shared pool of resources and you’ll always be one step behind with DRS and Storage DRS migrating those VMs from resource to resource.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>The Proactive Approach &amp; Solutions</strong></span></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Have plenty of CPU but short on memory? Easily increase your consolidation ratios by quickly comparing your current consolidation ratio to a recommended ratio based on your specific resources and workload. Advanced reporting and analytics can identify starved and over provisioned VMs, easily allowing you to make resource entitlements with accuracy and confidence.</p>\r\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"> <strong><em>2. We just upgraded our infrastructure - When will our resources run out?</em></strong></span>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><em></em><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Reactive Approach &amp; Challenges</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Using static alerts, you’ll have to wait for an alert to notify you when capacity reaches a threshold, or you can check in monthly, weekly, or daily on the specific resource you want to monitor.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The threat of not having enough resources to support a workload could be just as devastating to an environment as an outage. Workloads change, new workloads are created, and old workloads are decommissioned. Keeping up with these changes in a virtual environment is a daunting task.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Proactive Approach &amp; Solutions</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Capacity planning is fully integrated with vCOPS.  Know how many days you have until a resource like CPU or memory will be depleted, and quickly understand what resource is holding you back from further growth. Mitigate the risk of change and simulate what will happen to capacity and performance if you add or remove physical or virtual resources like a host or data store with the “what-if” scenario planner.<strong><em></em></strong></p>\r\n<img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"data:image/png;base64,[encoded data, 32988 characters]\" alt=\"\" width=\"227\" height=\"311\" />\r\n\r\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong><em>3. An application owner is requesting additional resources - What’s a normal workload for this application, and how do I know if they need additional resources?</em></strong></span>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Reactive Approach &amp; Challenges</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Check the performance history by going to each individual resource (VM, Host, Cluster and Storage).</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Set a static alert (or keep the default) to notify you when utilization of a resource reaches a specific threshold.  Respond to the alert after the threshold has been reached – and to the phone calls of frustrated customers. Static metrics and measurements create unnecessary administrative overhead. Set enough metrics and you’ll soon have a full-time job for one of your employees. Static metrics can only tell part of the story – they can’t tell you when CPU drops too low or tell you when you’re experiencing high utilization for an otherwise slow time like Saturday evening at 8 PM.<strong>  </strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">The Proactive Approach &amp; Solutions</span>\r\n</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Dynamic alerts learn your environment and know that Tuesday morning your reporting database will be pegged out for an hour from before the Staff Meeting and relatively quiet the rest of the week. vCOPS learns what normal usage is – it learns the highs and lows for a resource and alerts you to the anomalies of performance, and the stress in your environment.</p>\r\nAs you can see, vCOPS takes virtual infrastructure management to a whole new level of easy. Whether your environment consists of 50 or 5000 virtual machines, or whether your infrastructure is on premise or hosted in the cloud, vCenter Operations Manager brings control back where it belongs and thrusts you into a leadership position of proactivity.\r\n\r\nLet us know your thoughts and experiences with vCOPS in the comments below!','Hey IT Leaders – Would You Rather Be Proactive or Reactive?','','inherit','open','open','','7277-revision-15','','','2012-09-04 12:00:56','2012-09-04 16:00:56','',7277,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/7277-revision-15',0,'revision','',0),(7372,40,'2012-09-11 15:25:31','2012-09-11 19:25:31','For all the system admins out there deploying <a href=\"http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/product.asp?contentID=163057&amp;ntref=mainxdvanityurl\" target=\"_blank\">Citrix XenDesktop</a> for the first time, I suggest you read below!\n\nRecently, I tried to create a XenDesktop group that is using ESX 5.x as the hosting infrastructure, only to receive the following error message:\n\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>\"Unable to contact the hypervisor\"</strong></span>\n\n<a href=\"http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server/overview.html\" target=\"_blank\">vSphere vCenter Server</a> only allows connection through SSL (HTTPS) on port 443 by default. The vCenter uses a self-signed certificate that the Citrix XenDesktop application will not accept. The automatic installation process for certificates does not import into the correct location required for XenDesktop.\n\nBelow are the steps required to import the self-signed certificate onto the XenDesktop server to make the connection. Hope this helps. If you encounter any other issues or have any specific feedback, leave it in the comments below.\n\n<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">To use the VMware installed, self-signed certificate on vSphere</span>\n<ol start=\"1\">\n	<li>Add the fully qualified domain name for the vSphere server to c:\\windows\\drivers\\etc\\hosts if not present in DNS.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"2\">\n	<li>Using Internet Explorer - enter <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https://%3Cfqdn/\" target=\"_top\">https://&lt;FQDN</a></span> of vSphere server&gt;.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"3\">\n	<li>Accept the security warnings.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"4\">\n	<li>Click on the <strong>Certificate Error</strong> part of the address bar and select <strong>View Certificates</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"5\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Install Certificate</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"6\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Next</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"7\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Place all certificates in the following store</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"8\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Browse</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"9\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Show physical stores</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"10\">\n	<li>Expand <strong>Trusted People</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"11\">\n	<li>Select <strong>Local Computer</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"12\">\n	<li>Click <strong>OK</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"13\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Next</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"14\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Finish</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n&nbsp;','Fixing the XenDesktop error: \"Unable to contact the hypervisor\"','','inherit','open','open','','7327-revision-6','','','2012-09-11 15:25:31','2012-09-11 19:25:31','',7327,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/7327-revision-6',0,'revision','',0),(7373,40,'2012-09-11 15:28:04','2012-09-11 19:28:04','For all the system admins out there deploying <a href=\"http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/product.asp?contentID=163057&amp;ntref=mainxdvanityurl\" target=\"_blank\">Citrix XenDesktop</a> for the first time, I suggest you read below!\n\nRecently, I tried to create a XenDesktop group that is using ESX 5.x as the hosting infrastructure, only to receive the following error message:\n\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>\"Unable to contact the hypervisor\"</strong></span>\n\n<a href=\"http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server/overview.html\" target=\"_blank\">vSphere vCenter Server</a> only allows connection through SSL (HTTPS) on port 443 by default. The vCenter uses a self-signed certificate that the Citrix XenDesktop application will not accept. The automatic installation process for certificates does not import into the correct location required for XenDesktop.\n\nBelow are the steps required to import the self-signed certificate onto the XenDesktop server to make the connection. Hope this helps. If you encounter any other issues or have any specific feedback, leave it in the comments below.\n\n<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">To use the VMware installed, self-signed certificate on vSphere</span>\n<ol start=\"1\">\n	<li>Add the fully qualified domain name for the vSphere server to c:\\windows\\drivers\\etc\\hosts if not present in DNS.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"2\">\n	<li>Using Internet Explorer - enter <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https://%3Cfqdn/\" target=\"_top\">https://&lt;FQDN</a></span> of vSphere server&gt;.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"3\">\n	<li>Accept the security warnings.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"4\">\n	<li>Click on the <strong>Certificate Error</strong> part of the address bar and select <strong>View Certificates</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"5\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Install Certificate</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"6\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Next</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"7\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Place all certificates in the following store</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"8\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Browse</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"9\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Show physical stores</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"10\">\n	<li>Expand <strong>Trusted People</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"11\">\n	<li>Select <strong>Local Computer</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"12\">\n	<li>Click <strong>OK</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"13\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Next</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"14\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Finish</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n&nbsp;','Fixing the XenDesktop error: \"Unable to contact the hypervisor\"','','inherit','open','open','','7327-revision-7','','','2012-09-11 15:28:04','2012-09-11 19:28:04','',7327,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/7327-revision-7',0,'revision','',0),(7374,40,'2012-09-11 15:46:34','2012-09-11 19:46:34','','Step by Step install of self-signed certificate','','inherit','open','open','','step-by-step-install-of-self-signed-certificate','','','2012-09-11 15:46:34','2012-09-11 19:46:34','',7327,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Step-by-Step-install-of-self-signed-certificate.docx',0,'attachment','application/msword',0),(7375,40,'2012-09-11 15:45:35','2012-09-11 19:45:35','For all the system admins out there deploying <a href=\"http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/product.asp?contentID=163057&amp;ntref=mainxdvanityurl\" target=\"_blank\">Citrix XenDesktop</a> for the first time, I suggest you read below!\n\nRecently, I tried to create a XenDesktop group that is using ESX 5.x as the hosting infrastructure, only to receive the following error message:\n\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>\"Unable to contact the hypervisor\"</strong></span>\n\n<a href=\"http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server/overview.html\" target=\"_blank\">vSphere vCenter Server</a> only allows connection through SSL (HTTPS) on port 443 by default. The vCenter uses a self-signed certificate that the Citrix XenDesktop application will not accept. The automatic installation process for certificates does not import into the correct location required for XenDesktop.\n\nBelow are the steps required to import the self-signed certificate onto the XenDesktop server to make the connection. Hope this helps. If you encounter any other issues or have any specific feedback, leave it in the comments below.\n\n<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">To use the VMware installed, self-signed certificate on vSphere</span>\n<ol start=\"1\">\n	<li>Add the fully qualified domain name for the vSphere server to c:\\windows\\drivers\\etc\\hosts if not present in DNS.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"2\">\n	<li>Using Internet Explorer - enter <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https://%3Cfqdn/\" target=\"_top\">https://&lt;FQDN</a></span> of vSphere server&gt;.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"3\">\n	<li>Accept the security warnings.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"4\">\n	<li>Click on the <strong>Certificate Error</strong> part of the address bar and select <strong>View Certificates</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"5\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Install Certificate</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"6\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Next</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"7\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Place all certificates in the following store</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"8\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Browse</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"9\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Show physical stores</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"10\">\n	<li>Expand <strong>Trusted People</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"11\">\n	<li>Select <strong>Local Computer</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"12\">\n	<li>Click <strong>OK</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"13\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Next</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"14\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Finish</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\nFor an easy step by step installation of the self-signed certificate:','Fixing the XenDesktop error: \"Unable to contact the hypervisor\"','','inherit','open','open','','7327-revision-8','','','2012-09-11 15:45:35','2012-09-11 19:45:35','',7327,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/7327-revision-8',0,'revision','',0),(7376,40,'2012-09-11 15:48:08','2012-09-11 19:48:08','For all the system admins out there deploying <a href=\"http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/product.asp?contentID=163057&amp;ntref=mainxdvanityurl\" target=\"_blank\">Citrix XenDesktop</a> for the first time, I suggest you read below!\n\nRecently, I tried to create a XenDesktop group that is using ESX 5.x as the hosting infrastructure, only to receive the following error message:\n\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>\"Unable to contact the hypervisor\"</strong></span>\n\n<a href=\"http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server/overview.html\" target=\"_blank\">vSphere vCenter Server</a> only allows connection through SSL (HTTPS) on port 443 by default. The vCenter uses a self-signed certificate that the Citrix XenDesktop application will not accept. The automatic installation process for certificates does not import into the correct location required for XenDesktop.\n\nBelow are the steps required to import the self-signed certificate onto the XenDesktop server to make the connection. Hope this helps. If you encounter any other issues or have any specific feedback, leave it in the comments below.\n\n<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">To use the VMware installed, self-signed certificate on vSphere</span>\n<ol start=\"1\">\n	<li>Add the fully qualified domain name for the vSphere server to c:\\windows\\drivers\\etc\\hosts if not present in DNS.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"2\">\n	<li>Using Internet Explorer - enter <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https://%3Cfqdn/\" target=\"_top\">https://&lt;FQDN</a></span> of vSphere server&gt;.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"3\">\n	<li>Accept the security warnings.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"4\">\n	<li>Click on the <strong>Certificate Error</strong> part of the address bar and select <strong>View Certificates</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"5\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Install Certificate</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"6\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Next</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"7\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Place all certificates in the following store</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"8\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Browse</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"9\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Show physical stores</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"10\">\n	<li>Expand <strong>Trusted People</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"11\">\n	<li>Select <strong>Local Computer</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"12\">\n	<li>Click <strong>OK</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"13\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Next</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"14\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Finish</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\nHere\'s an easy <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Step-by-Step-install-of-self-signed-certificate.docx\">Step by Step install of self-signed certificate</a> (word document).','Fixing the XenDesktop error: \"Unable to contact the hypervisor\"','','inherit','open','open','','7327-revision-9','','','2012-09-11 15:48:08','2012-09-11 19:48:08','',7327,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/7327-revision-9',0,'revision','',0),(7377,40,'2012-09-11 16:07:17','2012-09-11 20:07:17','For all the system admins out there deploying <a href=\"http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/product.asp?contentID=163057&amp;ntref=mainxdvanityurl\" target=\"_blank\">Citrix XenDesktop</a> for the first time, I suggest you read below!\n\nRecently, I tried to create a XenDesktop group that is using ESX 5.x as the hosting infrastructure, only to receive the following error message:\n\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>\"Unable to contact the hypervisor\"</strong></span>\n\n<a href=\"http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server/overview.html\" target=\"_blank\">vSphere vCenter Server</a> only allows connection through SSL (HTTPS) on port 443 by default. The vCenter uses a self-signed certificate that the Citrix XenDesktop application will not accept. The automatic installation process for certificates does not import into the correct location required for XenDesktop.\n\nBelow are the steps required to import the self-signed certificate onto the XenDesktop server to make the connection. Hope this helps. If you encounter any other issues or have any specific feedback, leave it in the comments below.\n\n<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">To use the VMware installed, self-signed certificate on vSphere</span>\n<ol start=\"1\">\n	<li>Add the fully qualified domain name for the vSphere server to c:\\windows\\drivers\\etc\\hosts if not present in DNS.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"2\">\n	<li>Using Internet Explorer - enter <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https://%3Cfqdn/\" target=\"_top\">https://&lt;FQDN</a></span> of vSphere server&gt;.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"3\">\n	<li>Accept the security warnings.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"4\">\n	<li>Click on the <strong>Certificate Error</strong> part of the address bar and select <strong>View Certificates</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"5\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Install Certificate</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"6\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Next</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"7\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Place all certificates in the following store</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"8\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Browse</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"9\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Show physical stores</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"10\">\n	<li>Expand <strong>Trusted People</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"11\">\n	<li>Select <strong>Local Computer</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"12\">\n	<li>Click <strong>OK</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"13\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Next</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\n<ol start=\"14\">\n	<li>Click <strong>Finish</strong>.</li>\n</ol>\nHere\'s an easy step by <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Step-by-Step-install-of-self-signed-certificate1.docx\">Step by Step install of self-signed certificate</a> (word document).','Fixing the XenDesktop error: \"Unable to contact the hypervisor\"','','inherit','open','open','','7327-autosave','','','2012-09-11 16:07:17','2012-09-11 20:07:17','',7327,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/7327-autosave',0,'revision','',0),(7378,40,'2012-09-11 16:06:15','2012-09-11 20:06:15','','Step by Step install of self-signed certificate','','inherit','open','open','','step-by-step-install-of-self-signed-certificate-2','','','2012-09-11 16:06:15','2012-09-11 20:06:15','',7327,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Step-by-Step-install-of-self-signed-certificate1.docx',0,'attachment','application/msword',0),(7379,40,'2012-09-11 15:49:14','2012-09-11 19:49:14','For all the system admins out there deploying <a href=\"http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/product.asp?contentID=163057&amp;ntref=mainxdvanityurl\" target=\"_blank\">Citrix XenDesktop</a> for the first time, I suggest you read below!\r\n\r\nRecently, I tried to create a XenDesktop group that is using ESX 5.x as the hosting infrastructure, only to receive the following error message:\r\n\r\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>\"Unable to contact the hypervisor\"</strong></span>\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server/overview.html\" target=\"_blank\">vSphere vCenter Server</a> only allows connection through SSL (HTTPS) on port 443 by default. The vCenter uses a self-signed certificate that the Citrix XenDesktop application will not accept. The automatic installation process for certificates does not import into the correct location required for XenDesktop.\r\n\r\nBelow are the steps required to import the self-signed certificate onto the XenDesktop server to make the connection. Hope this helps. If you encounter any other issues or have any specific feedback, leave it in the comments below.\r\n\r\n<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">To use the VMware installed, self-signed certificate on vSphere</span>\r\n<ol start=\"1\">\r\n	<li>Add the fully qualified domain name for the vSphere server to c:\\windows\\drivers\\etc\\hosts if not present in DNS.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n<ol start=\"2\">\r\n	<li>Using Internet Explorer - enter <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https://%3Cfqdn/\" target=\"_top\">https://&lt;FQDN</a></span> of vSphere server&gt;.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n<ol start=\"3\">\r\n	<li>Accept the security warnings.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n<ol start=\"4\">\r\n	<li>Click on the <strong>Certificate Error</strong> part of the address bar and select <strong>View Certificates</strong>.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n<ol start=\"5\">\r\n	<li>Click <strong>Install Certificate</strong>.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n<ol start=\"6\">\r\n	<li>Click <strong>Next</strong>.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n<ol start=\"7\">\r\n	<li>Click <strong>Place all certificates in the following store</strong>.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n<ol start=\"8\">\r\n	<li>Click <strong>Browse</strong>.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n<ol start=\"9\">\r\n	<li>Click <strong>Show physical stores</strong>.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n<ol start=\"10\">\r\n	<li>Expand <strong>Trusted People</strong>.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n<ol start=\"11\">\r\n	<li>Select <strong>Local Computer</strong>.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n<ol start=\"12\">\r\n	<li>Click <strong>OK</strong>.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n<ol start=\"13\">\r\n	<li>Click <strong>Next</strong>.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n<ol start=\"14\">\r\n	<li>Click <strong>Finish</strong>.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\nHere\'s an easy <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Step-by-Step-install-of-self-signed-certificate.docx\">Step by Step install of self-signed certificate</a> (word document).','Fixing the XenDesktop error: \"Unable to contact the hypervisor\"','','inherit','open','open','','7327-revision-10','','','2012-09-11 15:49:14','2012-09-11 19:49:14','',7327,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/7327-revision-10',0,'revision','',0),(7382,44,'2012-09-14 09:51:27','2012-09-14 13:51:27','<a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/DA.png\"><img class=\"alignnone  wp-image-7384\" title=\"DA\" src=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/DA.png\" alt=\"Desktop Authority\" width=\"513\" height=\"354\" /></a>\r\n\r\nFor those of you that haven’t seen my previous post on Quest <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/why-you-need-scriptlogics-desktop-authority\">Desktop Authority</a>, you may not know that I am a huge fan of the product and how it easily centralizes management of the entire user environment.\r\n\r\nIt handles everything from patching, desktop and server policies, customization, to application deployment (I think the only thing they left out was the kitchen sink). That being said, my experiences with this product have always been positive, the flexibility it gives you when making customizations was always a huge value add but with end user computing constantly changing the way we do work and Firefox becoming more and more pervasive, I was quite concerned Desktop Authority may not be able to keep up.\r\n\r\nI must confess – I was wrong.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://www.quest.com/news-release/quest-reduces-cost-and-risk-of-delivering-a-customized-user-wor-062012-817704.aspx\">Desktop Authority 9</a> was released in June and I’ve finally had the time to talk with our customers about their upgrade experiences as well as take it for a test drive myself.\r\n\r\nThus far, the feedback I have received has been extremely positive. The all new user interface is now web based for ultimate access but still gives you that familiar feel that old school Desktop Authority users are accustomed to.\r\n\r\nThe Web UI wasn’t the only big change, of course. Below are a few of the more relevant ones I wanted to call out:\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Multiple Editions to suit customer needs</strong>:</span> Desktop Authority Standard Edition is the right choice for customers who need user environment management functionality to complement their existing management solution. Desktop Authority Essentials is ideal for basic user environment management or logon script replacement. Desktop Authority Professional is the right choice for companies with limited IT infrastructure. What does this mean? We have a heavy, light and in between version for those that need the little extra or not quite as much, saving you valuable dollars should you only need a few of the features.</li>\r\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>A high-performance console customers can access from anywhere, using only a web browser:</strong> </span>Install of a full Windows client just to change a setting or add a user is no longer required. The web console offers seamless support for dozens of concurrent administrators that allows, for example, one admin to edit a single element while another one moves the entire profile to another location. We live in a mobile world these days so it’s important to be able to access the console from anywhere on any device, and what better way to do that than through the web?</li>\r\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) support in Validation Logic: </strong></span>Customize configurations based on whether a user is on a physical machine, a Terminal Server, or a virtualized desktop. To me this is HUGE - it’s not all servers and physical desktops anymore! The VDI initiative is very popular (just ask <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/author/jflisher\" target=\"_blank\">John Flisher</a>) and having the ability to customize your environment for VDI is a must!</li>\r\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Internet browser management object with exclusive support for Mozilla Firefox:</strong></span> Administrators can configure the web browser home page, tabbed browser settings, privacy settings, restricted and approved sites and pop-up blocker settings for both Internet Explorer <em>and</em> Firefox (only Desktop Authority offers central configuration of Firefox). Finally! IE haters raise your hand… Okay, okay put them down, Desktop Authority now supports Firefox, go download the upgrade now!</li>\r\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Updated settings for Windows 7 and Office 2010 to support common folder redirection for Windows 7 (Music, Videos, Contacts, etc) as well as the new features in Office 2010:</strong></span> IT admins can easily make use of these this functionality and features through Desktop Authority and quickly migrate users to these newer platforms. This one is pretty self explanatory if you are using redirection now. If you are not, why!? Surely you hate roaming profiles as much as the next guy so take advantage of this and let Desktop Authority ease your pain.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nIn my humble opinion, Desktop Authority <em>is</em> <em>absolutely</em> ready for prime time. That said, don’t just take my word for it. This is what one of our Healthcare customers had to say:\r\n\r\n<strong><em>“I\'ve been using Scriptlogic\'s Desktop Authority at version 8.1 for a little over a year now.  I was initially very impressed with the product so much so that I recommended it to some of my former colleagues.  My impression hasn\'t changed, however, I did find a few shortcomings with the product that have now been rectified in version 9.0. Specifically folder redirection on Windows 7 and Internet Explorer management, both have been greatly improved from their previous limited states.  I\'m also excited about the introduction of validation logic for VDI and the ability to craft policies specifically for our VMware View desktops. Overall Desktop Authority 9.0 is a tremendous product that would be a welcome addition to any IT Administrators tool set.”</em></strong>','Is Quest Desktop Authority 9 Ready for Prime Time?','','publish','open','open','','is-quest-desktop-authority-9-ready-for-prime-time','','','2012-09-14 09:51:27','2012-09-14 13:51:27','',0,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/?p=7382',0,'post','',0),(7383,40,'2012-09-14 09:43:32','2012-09-14 13:43:32','For those of you that haven’t seen my previous post on Quest <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/why-you-need-scriptlogics-desktop-authority\">Desktop Authority</a>, you may not know that I am a huge fan of the product and how it easily centralizes management of the entire user environment.\n\nIt handles everything from patching, desktop and server policies, customization, to application deployment (I think the only thing they left out was the kitchen sink). That being said, my experiences with this product have always been positive, the flexibility it gives you when making customizations was always a huge value add but with end user computing constantly changing the way we do work and Firefox becoming more and more pervasive, I was quite concerned Desktop Authority may not be able to keep up.\n\nI must confess – I was wrong.\n\n<a href=\"http://www.quest.com/news-release/quest-reduces-cost-and-risk-of-delivering-a-customized-user-wor-062012-817704.aspx\">Desktop Authority 9</a> was released in June and I’ve finally had the time to talk with our customers about their upgrade experiences as well as take it for a test drive myself.\n\nThus far, the feedback I have received has been extremely positive. The all new user interface is now web based for ultimate access but still gives you that familiar feel that old school Desktop Authority users are accustomed to.\n\nThe Web UI wasn’t the only big change, of course. Below are a few of the more relevant ones I wanted to call out:\n<ul>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Multiple Editions to suit customer needs</strong>:</span> Desktop Authority Standard Edition is the right choice for customers who need user environment management functionality to complement their existing management solution. Desktop Authority Essentials is ideal for basic user environment management or logon script replacement. Desktop Authority Professional is the right choice for companies with limited IT infrastructure. What does this mean? We have a heavy, light and in between version for those that need the little extra or not quite as much, saving you valuable dollars should you only need a few of the features.</li>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>A high-performance console customers can access from anywhere, using only a web browser:</strong> </span>Install of a full Windows client just to change a setting or add a user is no longer required. The web console offers seamless support for dozens of concurrent administrators that allows, for example, one admin to edit a single element while another one moves the entire profile to another location. We live in a mobile world these days so it’s important to be able to access the console from anywhere on any device, and what better way to do that than through the web?</li>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) support in Validation Logic: </strong></span>Customize configurations based on whether a user is on a physical machine, a Terminal Server, or a virtualized desktop. To me this is HUGE - it’s not all servers and physical desktops anymore! The VDI initiative is very popular (just ask <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/author/jflisher\" target=\"_blank\">John Flisher</a>) and having the ability to customize your environment for VDI is a must!</li>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Internet browser management object with exclusive support for Mozilla Firefox:</strong></span> Administrators can configure the web browser home page, tabbed browser settings, privacy settings, restricted and approved sites and pop-up blocker settings for both Internet Explorer <em>and</em> Firefox (only Desktop Authority offers central configuration of Firefox). Finally! IE haters raise your hand… Okay, okay put them down, Desktop Authority now supports Firefox, go download the upgrade now!</li>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Updated settings for Windows 7 and Office 2010 to support common folder redirection for Windows 7 (Music, Videos, Contacts, etc) as well as the new features in Office 2010:</strong></span> IT admins can easily make use of these this functionality and features through Desktop Authority and quickly migrate users to these newer platforms. This one is pretty self explanatory if you are using redirection now. If you are not, why!? Surely you hate roaming profiles as much as the next guy so take advantage of this and let Desktop Authority ease your pain.</li>\n</ul>\nIn my humble opinion, Desktop Authority <em>is</em>  <em>absolutely</em> ready for primetime.\n\nThat said, don’t just take my word for it. This is what one of our Healthcare customers had to say:\n\n<strong><em>“I\'ve been using Scriptlogic\'s Desktop Authority at version 8.1 for a little over a year now.  I was initially very impressed with the product so much so that I recommended it to some of my former colleagues.  My impression hasn\'t changed, however, I did find a few shortcomings with the product that have now been rectified in version 9.0. Specifically folder redirection on Windows 7 and Internet Explorer management, both have been greatly improved from their previous limited states.  I\'m also excited about the introduction of validation logic for VDI and the ability to craft policies specifically for our VMware View desktops. Overall Desktop Authority 9.0 is a tremendous product that would be a welcome addition to any IT Administrators tool set.”</em></strong>','Is Quest Desktop Authority 9 Ready for Prime Time?','','inherit','open','open','','7382-revision','','','2012-09-14 09:43:32','2012-09-14 13:43:32','',7382,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/7382-revision',0,'revision','',0),(7384,40,'2012-09-14 09:47:53','2012-09-14 13:47:53','','DA','','inherit','open','open','','da','','','2012-09-14 09:47:53','2012-09-14 13:47:53','',7382,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/DA.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(7385,40,'2012-09-14 09:48:23','2012-09-14 13:48:23','<a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/DA.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7384\" title=\"DA\" src=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/DA.png\" alt=\"Desktop Authority\" width=\"641\" height=\"443\" /></a>\n\nFor those of you that haven’t seen my previous post on Quest <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/why-you-need-scriptlogics-desktop-authority\">Desktop Authority</a>, you may not know that I am a huge fan of the product and how it easily centralizes management of the entire user environment.\n\nIt handles everything from patching, desktop and server policies, customization, to application deployment (I think the only thing they left out was the kitchen sink). That being said, my experiences with this product have always been positive, the flexibility it gives you when making customizations was always a huge value add but with end user computing constantly changing the way we do work and Firefox becoming more and more pervasive, I was quite concerned Desktop Authority may not be able to keep up.\n\nI must confess – I was wrong.\n\n<a href=\"http://www.quest.com/news-release/quest-reduces-cost-and-risk-of-delivering-a-customized-user-wor-062012-817704.aspx\">Desktop Authority 9</a> was released in June and I’ve finally had the time to talk with our customers about their upgrade experiences as well as take it for a test drive myself.\n\nThus far, the feedback I have received has been extremely positive. The all new user interface is now web based for ultimate access but still gives you that familiar feel that old school Desktop Authority users are accustomed to.\n\nThe Web UI wasn’t the only big change, of course. Below are a few of the more relevant ones I wanted to call out:\n<ul>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Multiple Editions to suit customer needs</strong>:</span> Desktop Authority Standard Edition is the right choice for customers who need user environment management functionality to complement their existing management solution. Desktop Authority Essentials is ideal for basic user environment management or logon script replacement. Desktop Authority Professional is the right choice for companies with limited IT infrastructure. What does this mean? We have a heavy, light and in between version for those that need the little extra or not quite as much, saving you valuable dollars should you only need a few of the features.</li>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>A high-performance console customers can access from anywhere, using only a web browser:</strong> </span>Install of a full Windows client just to change a setting or add a user is no longer required. The web console offers seamless support for dozens of concurrent administrators that allows, for example, one admin to edit a single element while another one moves the entire profile to another location. We live in a mobile world these days so it’s important to be able to access the console from anywhere on any device, and what better way to do that than through the web?</li>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) support in Validation Logic: </strong></span>Customize configurations based on whether a user is on a physical machine, a Terminal Server, or a virtualized desktop. To me this is HUGE - it’s not all servers and physical desktops anymore! The VDI initiative is very popular (just ask <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/author/jflisher\" target=\"_blank\">John Flisher</a>) and having the ability to customize your environment for VDI is a must!</li>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Internet browser management object with exclusive support for Mozilla Firefox:</strong></span> Administrators can configure the web browser home page, tabbed browser settings, privacy settings, restricted and approved sites and pop-up blocker settings for both Internet Explorer <em>and</em> Firefox (only Desktop Authority offers central configuration of Firefox). Finally! IE haters raise your hand… Okay, okay put them down, Desktop Authority now supports Firefox, go download the upgrade now!</li>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Updated settings for Windows 7 and Office 2010 to support common folder redirection for Windows 7 (Music, Videos, Contacts, etc) as well as the new features in Office 2010:</strong></span> IT admins can easily make use of these this functionality and features through Desktop Authority and quickly migrate users to these newer platforms. This one is pretty self explanatory if you are using redirection now. If you are not, why!? Surely you hate roaming profiles as much as the next guy so take advantage of this and let Desktop Authority ease your pain.</li>\n</ul>\nIn my humble opinion, Desktop Authority <em>is</em>  <em>absolutely</em> ready for primetime.\n\nThat said, don’t just take my word for it. This is what one of our Healthcare customers had to say:\n\n<strong><em>“I\'ve been using Scriptlogic\'s Desktop Authority at version 8.1 for a little over a year now.  I was initially very impressed with the product so much so that I recommended it to some of my former colleagues.  My impression hasn\'t changed, however, I did find a few shortcomings with the product that have now been rectified in version 9.0. Specifically folder redirection on Windows 7 and Internet Explorer management, both have been greatly improved from their previous limited states.  I\'m also excited about the introduction of validation logic for VDI and the ability to craft policies specifically for our VMware View desktops. Overall Desktop Authority 9.0 is a tremendous product that would be a welcome addition to any IT Administrators tool set.”</em></strong>','Is Quest Desktop Authority 9 Ready for Prime Time?','','inherit','open','open','','7382-revision-2','','','2012-09-14 09:48:23','2012-09-14 13:48:23','',7382,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/7382-revision-2',0,'revision','',0),(7387,40,'2012-09-14 09:50:23','2012-09-14 13:50:23','<a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/DA.png\"><img class=\"alignnone  wp-image-7384\" title=\"DA\" src=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/DA.png\" alt=\"Desktop Authority\" width=\"513\" height=\"354\" /></a>\n\nFor those of you that haven’t seen my previous post on Quest <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/why-you-need-scriptlogics-desktop-authority\">Desktop Authority</a>, you may not know that I am a huge fan of the product and how it easily centralizes management of the entire user environment.\n\nIt handles everything from patching, desktop and server policies, customization, to application deployment (I think the only thing they left out was the kitchen sink). That being said, my experiences with this product have always been positive, the flexibility it gives you when making customizations was always a huge value add but with end user computing constantly changing the way we do work and Firefox becoming more and more pervasive, I was quite concerned Desktop Authority may not be able to keep up.\n\nI must confess – I was wrong.\n\n<a href=\"http://www.quest.com/news-release/quest-reduces-cost-and-risk-of-delivering-a-customized-user-wor-062012-817704.aspx\">Desktop Authority 9</a> was released in June and I’ve finally had the time to talk with our customers about their upgrade experiences as well as take it for a test drive myself.\n\nThus far, the feedback I have received has been extremely positive. The all new user interface is now web based for ultimate access but still gives you that familiar feel that old school Desktop Authority users are accustomed to.\n\nThe Web UI wasn’t the only big change, of course. Below are a few of the more relevant ones I wanted to call out:\n<ul>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Multiple Editions to suit customer needs</strong>:</span> Desktop Authority Standard Edition is the right choice for customers who need user environment management functionality to complement their existing management solution. Desktop Authority Essentials is ideal for basic user environment management or logon script replacement. Desktop Authority Professional is the right choice for companies with limited IT infrastructure. What does this mean? We have a heavy, light and in between version for those that need the little extra or not quite as much, saving you valuable dollars should you only need a few of the features.</li>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>A high-performance console customers can access from anywhere, using only a web browser:</strong> </span>Install of a full Windows client just to change a setting or add a user is no longer required. The web console offers seamless support for dozens of concurrent administrators that allows, for example, one admin to edit a single element while another one moves the entire profile to another location. We live in a mobile world these days so it’s important to be able to access the console from anywhere on any device, and what better way to do that than through the web?</li>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) support in Validation Logic: </strong></span>Customize configurations based on whether a user is on a physical machine, a Terminal Server, or a virtualized desktop. To me this is HUGE - it’s not all servers and physical desktops anymore! The VDI initiative is very popular (just ask <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/author/jflisher\" target=\"_blank\">John Flisher</a>) and having the ability to customize your environment for VDI is a must!</li>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Internet browser management object with exclusive support for Mozilla Firefox:</strong></span> Administrators can configure the web browser home page, tabbed browser settings, privacy settings, restricted and approved sites and pop-up blocker settings for both Internet Explorer <em>and</em> Firefox (only Desktop Authority offers central configuration of Firefox). Finally! IE haters raise your hand… Okay, okay put them down, Desktop Authority now supports Firefox, go download the upgrade now!</li>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Updated settings for Windows 7 and Office 2010 to support common folder redirection for Windows 7 (Music, Videos, Contacts, etc) as well as the new features in Office 2010:</strong></span> IT admins can easily make use of these this functionality and features through Desktop Authority and quickly migrate users to these newer platforms. This one is pretty self explanatory if you are using redirection now. If you are not, why!? Surely you hate roaming profiles as much as the next guy so take advantage of this and let Desktop Authority ease your pain.In my humble opinion, Desktop Authority <em>is</em> <em>absolutely</em> ready for prime time.</li>\n</ul>\nThat said, don’t just take my word for it. This is what one of our Healthcare customers had to say:\n\n<strong><em>“I\'ve been using Scriptlogic\'s Desktop Authority at version 8.1 for a little over a year now.  I was initially very impressed with the product so much so that I recommended it to some of my former colleagues.  My impression hasn\'t changed, however, I did find a few shortcomings with the product that have now been rectified in version 9.0. Specifically folder redirection on Windows 7 and Internet Explorer management, both have been greatly improved from their previous limited states.  I\'m also excited about the introduction of validation logic for VDI and the ability to craft policies specifically for our VMware View desktops. Overall Desktop Authority 9.0 is a tremendous product that would be a welcome addition to any IT Administrators tool set.”</em></strong>','Is Quest Desktop Authority 9 Ready for Prime Time?','','inherit','open','open','','7382-revision-4','','','2012-09-14 09:50:23','2012-09-14 13:50:23','',7382,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/7382-revision-4',0,'revision','',0),(7386,40,'2012-09-14 09:48:29','2012-09-14 13:48:29','<a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/DA.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7384\" title=\"DA\" src=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/DA.png\" alt=\"Desktop Authority\" width=\"641\" height=\"443\" /></a>\r\n\r\nFor those of you that haven’t seen my previous post on Quest <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/why-you-need-scriptlogics-desktop-authority\">Desktop Authority</a>, you may not know that I am a huge fan of the product and how it easily centralizes management of the entire user environment.\r\n\r\nIt handles everything from patching, desktop and server policies, customization, to application deployment (I think the only thing they left out was the kitchen sink). That being said, my experiences with this product have always been positive, the flexibility it gives you when making customizations was always a huge value add but with end user computing constantly changing the way we do work and Firefox becoming more and more pervasive, I was quite concerned Desktop Authority may not be able to keep up.\r\n\r\nI must confess – I was wrong.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://www.quest.com/news-release/quest-reduces-cost-and-risk-of-delivering-a-customized-user-wor-062012-817704.aspx\">Desktop Authority 9</a> was released in June and I’ve finally had the time to talk with our customers about their upgrade experiences as well as take it for a test drive myself.\r\n\r\nThus far, the feedback I have received has been extremely positive. The all new user interface is now web based for ultimate access but still gives you that familiar feel that old school Desktop Authority users are accustomed to.\r\n\r\nThe Web UI wasn’t the only big change, of course. Below are a few of the more relevant ones I wanted to call out:\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Multiple Editions to suit customer needs</strong>:</span> Desktop Authority Standard Edition is the right choice for customers who need user environment management functionality to complement their existing management solution. Desktop Authority Essentials is ideal for basic user environment management or logon script replacement. Desktop Authority Professional is the right choice for companies with limited IT infrastructure. What does this mean? We have a heavy, light and in between version for those that need the little extra or not quite as much, saving you valuable dollars should you only need a few of the features.</li>\r\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>A high-performance console customers can access from anywhere, using only a web browser:</strong> </span>Install of a full Windows client just to change a setting or add a user is no longer required. The web console offers seamless support for dozens of concurrent administrators that allows, for example, one admin to edit a single element while another one moves the entire profile to another location. We live in a mobile world these days so it’s important to be able to access the console from anywhere on any device, and what better way to do that than through the web?</li>\r\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) support in Validation Logic: </strong></span>Customize configurations based on whether a user is on a physical machine, a Terminal Server, or a virtualized desktop. To me this is HUGE - it’s not all servers and physical desktops anymore! The VDI initiative is very popular (just ask <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/author/jflisher\" target=\"_blank\">John Flisher</a>) and having the ability to customize your environment for VDI is a must!</li>\r\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Internet browser management object with exclusive support for Mozilla Firefox:</strong></span> Administrators can configure the web browser home page, tabbed browser settings, privacy settings, restricted and approved sites and pop-up blocker settings for both Internet Explorer <em>and</em> Firefox (only Desktop Authority offers central configuration of Firefox). Finally! IE haters raise your hand… Okay, okay put them down, Desktop Authority now supports Firefox, go download the upgrade now!</li>\r\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Updated settings for Windows 7 and Office 2010 to support common folder redirection for Windows 7 (Music, Videos, Contacts, etc) as well as the new features in Office 2010:</strong></span> IT admins can easily make use of these this functionality and features through Desktop Authority and quickly migrate users to these newer platforms. This one is pretty self explanatory if you are using redirection now. If you are not, why!? Surely you hate roaming profiles as much as the next guy so take advantage of this and let Desktop Authority ease your pain.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nIn my humble opinion, Desktop Authority <em>is</em>  <em>absolutely</em> ready for primetime.\r\n\r\nThat said, don’t just take my word for it. This is what one of our Healthcare customers had to say:\r\n\r\n<strong><em>“I\'ve been using Scriptlogic\'s Desktop Authority at version 8.1 for a little over a year now.  I was initially very impressed with the product so much so that I recommended it to some of my former colleagues.  My impression hasn\'t changed, however, I did find a few shortcomings with the product that have now been rectified in version 9.0. Specifically folder redirection on Windows 7 and Internet Explorer management, both have been greatly improved from their previous limited states.  I\'m also excited about the introduction of validation logic for VDI and the ability to craft policies specifically for our VMware View desktops. Overall Desktop Authority 9.0 is a tremendous product that would be a welcome addition to any IT Administrators tool set.”</em></strong>','Is Quest Desktop Authority 9 Ready for Prime Time?','','inherit','open','open','','7382-revision-3','','','2012-09-14 09:48:29','2012-09-14 13:48:29','',7382,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/7382-revision-3',0,'revision','',0),(7388,40,'2012-09-14 09:50:39','2012-09-14 13:50:39','<a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/DA.png\"><img class=\"alignnone  wp-image-7384\" title=\"DA\" src=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/DA.png\" alt=\"Desktop Authority\" width=\"513\" height=\"354\" /></a>\r\n\r\nFor those of you that haven’t seen my previous post on Quest <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/why-you-need-scriptlogics-desktop-authority\">Desktop Authority</a>, you may not know that I am a huge fan of the product and how it easily centralizes management of the entire user environment.\r\n\r\nIt handles everything from patching, desktop and server policies, customization, to application deployment (I think the only thing they left out was the kitchen sink). That being said, my experiences with this product have always been positive, the flexibility it gives you when making customizations was always a huge value add but with end user computing constantly changing the way we do work and Firefox becoming more and more pervasive, I was quite concerned Desktop Authority may not be able to keep up.\r\n\r\nI must confess – I was wrong.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://www.quest.com/news-release/quest-reduces-cost-and-risk-of-delivering-a-customized-user-wor-062012-817704.aspx\">Desktop Authority 9</a> was released in June and I’ve finally had the time to talk with our customers about their upgrade experiences as well as take it for a test drive myself.\r\n\r\nThus far, the feedback I have received has been extremely positive. The all new user interface is now web based for ultimate access but still gives you that familiar feel that old school Desktop Authority users are accustomed to.\r\n\r\nThe Web UI wasn’t the only big change, of course. Below are a few of the more relevant ones I wanted to call out:\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Multiple Editions to suit customer needs</strong>:</span> Desktop Authority Standard Edition is the right choice for customers who need user environment management functionality to complement their existing management solution. Desktop Authority Essentials is ideal for basic user environment management or logon script replacement. Desktop Authority Professional is the right choice for companies with limited IT infrastructure. What does this mean? We have a heavy, light and in between version for those that need the little extra or not quite as much, saving you valuable dollars should you only need a few of the features.</li>\r\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>A high-performance console customers can access from anywhere, using only a web browser:</strong> </span>Install of a full Windows client just to change a setting or add a user is no longer required. The web console offers seamless support for dozens of concurrent administrators that allows, for example, one admin to edit a single element while another one moves the entire profile to another location. We live in a mobile world these days so it’s important to be able to access the console from anywhere on any device, and what better way to do that than through the web?</li>\r\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) support in Validation Logic: </strong></span>Customize configurations based on whether a user is on a physical machine, a Terminal Server, or a virtualized desktop. To me this is HUGE - it’s not all servers and physical desktops anymore! The VDI initiative is very popular (just ask <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/author/jflisher\" target=\"_blank\">John Flisher</a>) and having the ability to customize your environment for VDI is a must!</li>\r\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Internet browser management object with exclusive support for Mozilla Firefox:</strong></span> Administrators can configure the web browser home page, tabbed browser settings, privacy settings, restricted and approved sites and pop-up blocker settings for both Internet Explorer <em>and</em> Firefox (only Desktop Authority offers central configuration of Firefox). Finally! IE haters raise your hand… Okay, okay put them down, Desktop Authority now supports Firefox, go download the upgrade now!</li>\r\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Updated settings for Windows 7 and Office 2010 to support common folder redirection for Windows 7 (Music, Videos, Contacts, etc) as well as the new features in Office 2010:</strong></span> IT admins can easily make use of these this functionality and features through Desktop Authority and quickly migrate users to these newer platforms. This one is pretty self explanatory if you are using redirection now. If you are not, why!? Surely you hate roaming profiles as much as the next guy so take advantage of this and let Desktop Authority ease your pain.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nIn my humble opinion, Desktop Authority <em>is</em> <em>absolutely</em> ready for prime time. That said, don’t just take my word for it. This is what one of our Healthcare customers had to say:\r\n\r\n<strong><em>“I\'ve been using Scriptlogic\'s Desktop Authority at version 8.1 for a little over a year now.  I was initially very impressed with the product so much so that I recommended it to some of my former colleagues.  My impression hasn\'t changed, however, I did find a few shortcomings with the product that have now been rectified in version 9.0. Specifically folder redirection on Windows 7 and Internet Explorer management, both have been greatly improved from their previous limited states.  I\'m also excited about the introduction of validation logic for VDI and the ability to craft policies specifically for our VMware View desktops. Overall Desktop Authority 9.0 is a tremendous product that would be a welcome addition to any IT Administrators tool set.”</em></strong>','Is Quest Desktop Authority 9 Ready for Prime Time?','','inherit','open','open','','7382-revision-5','','','2012-09-14 09:50:39','2012-09-14 13:50:39','',7382,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/7382-revision-5',0,'revision','',0),(7389,40,'2012-09-14 09:55:56','2012-09-14 13:55:56','<a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/DA.png\"><img class=\"alignnone  wp-image-7384\" title=\"DA\" src=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/DA.png\" alt=\"Desktop Authority\" width=\"513\" height=\"354\" /></a>\n\nFor those of you that haven’t seen my previous post on Quest <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/why-you-need-scriptlogics-desktop-authority\">Desktop Authority</a>, you may not know that I am a huge fan of the product and how it easily centralizes management of the entire user environment.\n\nIt handles everything from patching, desktop and server policies, customization, to application deployment (I think the only thing they left out was the kitchen sink). That being said, my experiences with this product have always been positive, the flexibility it gives you when making customizations was always a huge value add but with end user computing constantly changing the way we do work and Firefox becoming more and more pervasive, I was quite concerned Desktop Authority may not be able to keep up.\n\nI must confess – I was wrong.\n\n<a href=\"http://www.quest.com/news-release/quest-reduces-cost-and-risk-of-delivering-a-customized-user-wor-062012-817704.aspx\">Desktop Authority 9</a> was released in June and I’ve finally had the time to talk with our customers about their upgrade experiences as well as take it for a test drive myself.\n\nThus far, the feedback I have received has been extremely positive. The all new user interface is now web based for ultimate access but still gives you that familiar feel that old school Desktop Authority users are accustomed to.\n\nThe Web UI wasn’t the only big change, of course. Below are a few of the more relevant ones I wanted to call out:\n<ul>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Multiple Editions to suit customer needs</strong>:</span> Desktop Authority Standard Edition is the right choice for customers who need user environment management functionality to complement their existing management solution. Desktop Authority Essentials is ideal for basic user environment management or logon script replacement. Desktop Authority Professional is the right choice for companies with limited IT infrastructure. What does this mean? We have a heavy, light and in between version for those that need the little extra or not quite as much, saving you valuable dollars should you only need a few of the features.</li>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>A high-performance console customers can access from anywhere, using only a web browser:</strong> </span>Install of a full Windows client just to change a setting or add a user is no longer required. The web console offers seamless support for dozens of concurrent administrators that allows, for example, one admin to edit a single element while another one moves the entire profile to another location. We live in a mobile world these days so it’s important to be able to access the console from anywhere on any device, and what better way to do that than through the web?</li>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) support in Validation Logic: </strong></span>Customize configurations based on whether a user is on a physical machine, a Terminal Server, or a virtualized desktop. To me this is HUGE - it’s not all servers and physical desktops anymore! The VDI initiative is very popular (just ask <a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/author/jflisher\" target=\"_blank\">John Flisher</a>) and having the ability to customize your environment for VDI is a must!</li>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Internet browser management object with exclusive support for Mozilla Firefox:</strong></span> Administrators can configure the web browser home page, tabbed browser settings, privacy settings, restricted and approved sites and pop-up blocker settings for both Internet Explorer <em>and</em> Firefox (only Desktop Authority offers central configuration of Firefox). Finally! IE haters raise your hand… Okay, okay put them down, Desktop Authority now supports Firefox, go download the upgrade now!</li>\n	<li><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Updated settings for Windows 7 and Office 2010 to support common folder redirection for Windows 7 (Music, Videos, Contacts, etc) as well as the new features in Office 2010:</strong></span> IT admins can easily make use of these this functionality and features through Desktop Authority and quickly migrate users to these newer platforms. This one is pretty self explanatory if you are using redirection now. If you are not, why!? Surely you hate roaming profiles as much as the next guy so take advantage of this and let Desktop Authority ease your pain.</li>\n</ul>\nIn my humble opinion, Desktop Authority <em>is</em> <em>absolutely</em> ready for prime time. That said, don’t just take my word for it. This is what one of our Healthcare customers had to say:\n\n<strong><em>“I\'ve been using Scriptlogic\'s Desktop Authority at version 8.1 for a little over a year now.  I was initially very impressed with the product so much so that I recommended it to some of my former colleagues.  My impression hasn\'t changed, however, I did find a few shortcomings with the product that have now been rectified in version 9.0. Specifically folder redirection on Windows 7 and Internet Explorer management, both have been greatly improved from their previous limited states.  I\'m also excited about the introduction of validation logic for VDI and the ability to craft policies specifically for our VMware View desktops. Overall Desktop Authority 9.0 is a tremendous product that would be a welcome addition to any IT Administrators tool set.”</em></strong>','Is Quest Desktop Authority 9 Ready for Prime Time?','','inherit','open','open','','7382-autosave','','','2012-09-14 09:55:56','2012-09-14 13:55:56','',7382,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/7382-autosave',0,'revision','',0),(7390,40,'2012-09-04 18:10:42','2012-09-04 22:10:42','Microsoft has dubbed Windows Server 2012 a true \"Cloud OS\", and the enhancements to Hyper-V included in this release certainly give that claim credence.  One of these new features is the ability to run Hyper-V workloads on SMB file-based storage.  More specifically, using the SMB 3 protocol released with Windows Server 2012 (and soon available on other NAS appliances from leading vendors).  The ability to use file storage provides a good option for administrators looking to deploy the virtualization platform without the added complexity of managing a traditional storage array.\r\n\r\nDeploying Hyper-V over SMB is a very simple process.  The first step is using Server Manager on a designated file server (or PowerShell) to create a new SMB 3 file share, granting the necessary permissions.\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li>In the \"File and Storage Services\" section, select \"Shares\", the \"Tasks\" drop-down menu, \"New Share\".</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n<a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Screen-Shot-2012-09-04-at-5.07.24-PM1.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-7300\" src=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Screen-Shot-2012-09-04-at-5.07.24-PM1-300x153.png\" alt=\"New Share\" width=\"300\" height=\"153\" /></a>\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li>For the \"Select Profile\" option, select \"SMB Share - Applications\".</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n<a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Screen-Shot-2012-09-04-at-5.07.58-PM.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-7304\" src=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Screen-Shot-2012-09-04-at-5.07.58-PM-300x218.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"218\" /></a>\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li>Make select \"Customize\" on the permissions screen, \"Select a Principal\", change the Object Type to \"Computers\", enter the Hyper-V host, and select \"Full Control\".</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n<a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Screen-Shot-2012-09-04-at-5.10.07-PM1.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-7303\" src=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Screen-Shot-2012-09-04-at-5.10.07-PM1-300x170.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"170\" /></a>\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li>Now, when creating a virtual machine enter the UNC path for the new file share.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n<a href=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Screen-Shot-2012-09-04-at-6.05.40-PM.png\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-7306\" src=\"http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Screen-Shot-2012-09-04-at-6.05.40-PM-300x228.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"228\" /></a>\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;','Microsoft Windows Server 2012: Hyper-V and SMB 3','','inherit','open','open','','7295-revision-8','','','2012-09-04 18:10:42','2012-09-04 22:10:42','',7295,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/7295-revision-8',0,'revision','',0),(7618,23,'2012-10-24 13:40:11','2012-10-24 17:40:11','Driving User Adoption for SharePoint is one of the most important, but also one of the most difficult tasks that a SharePoint architect/administrator has.  You could even say that it is THE most important task when designing/deploying SharePoint.  Simply because it drives everything else.  If the deployment doesn\'t function correctly, then user adoption will suffer.  If it is difficult to navigate or understand, then user adoption will suffer.\r\n\r\nHere are some key areas that I like to focus on when planning for user adoption...\r\n\r\n1. Make it Familiar\r\n\r\nIn order to properly design a SharePoint deployment, you have think like an end user.  And not just any end user...YOUR end users.  Every corporate IT environment is unique.\r\n\r\nHow do your users access shared documents?\r\nHow do they access their personal documents?\r\nHow do they access reports?\r\nHow do they share ideas?\r\n\r\nThese are all key questions that need to be asked.  A survey of a portion of your users probably wouldn\'t hurt either.  The closer you can make accessing documents and information to the way your users are familiar with will help tremendously with user adoption!\r\n\r\n2. Make it Functional\r\n\r\nOne of the biggest reasons for choosing SharePoint that I hear is for \'document sharing\'.  But, why use SharePoint?  Why not just use a network share or maybe even a cloud based sharing solution?  These are common questions and they are completely understandable.  However, it shows a lack of understanding of the key enterprise features that SharePoint offers.  Here are some key features that users should be well trained on prior to deployment so they fully understand how to use the tool...\r\n\r\nVersioning\r\nContent Types and Document Templates\r\nEnterprise Search\r\nWorkflows','SHAREPOINT 2010: ACCELERATING USER ADOPTION','','inherit','open','open','','4774-revision-v1','','','2012-10-24 13:40:11','2012-10-24 17:40:11','',4774,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/4774-revision-3',0,'revision','',0),(7619,23,'2012-10-24 13:40:19','2012-10-24 17:40:19','Driving User Adoption for SharePoint is one of the most important, but also one of the most difficult tasks that a SharePoint architect/administrator has.  You could even say that it is THE most important task when designing/deploying SharePoint.  Simply because it drives everything else.  If the deployment doesn\'t function correctly, then user adoption will suffer.  If it is difficult to navigate or understand, then user adoption will suffer.\r\n\r\nHere are some key areas that I like to focus on when planning for user adoption...\r\n\r\n1. Make it Familiar\r\n\r\nIn order to properly design a SharePoint deployment, you have think like an end user.  And not just any end user...YOUR end users.  Every corporate IT environment is unique.\r\n\r\nHow do your users access shared documents?\r\nHow do they access their personal documents?\r\nHow do they access reports?\r\nHow do they share ideas?\r\n\r\nThese are all key questions that need to be asked.  A survey of a portion of your users probably wouldn\'t hurt either.  The closer you can make accessing documents and information to the way your users are familiar with will help tremendously with user adoption!\r\n\r\n2. Make it Functional\r\n\r\nOne of the biggest reasons for choosing SharePoint that I hear is for \'document sharing\'.  But, why use SharePoint?  Why not just use a network share or maybe even a cloud based sharing solution?  These are common questions and they are completely understandable.  However, it shows a lack of understanding of the key enterprise features that SharePoint offers.  Here are some key features that users should be well trained on prior to deployment so they fully understand how to use the tool...\r\n\r\nVersioning\r\nContent Types and Document Templates\r\nEnterprise Search\r\nWorkflows','SHAREPOINT: ACCELERATING USER ADOPTION','','inherit','open','open','','4774-revision-v1','','','2012-10-24 13:40:19','2012-10-24 17:40:19','',4774,'http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/4774-revision-4',0,'revision','',0),