Deft Blog
Keep up with the latest insights in colocation, cloud, and disaster recovery services
Managing Shadow IT Risks by Building IT Resources for the Future
Shadow is the greatest opportunity for innovation your company has — if the shadow IT risks don’t cut into your business first.
Shadow Technologies Drop Security Risks and Drive Business Value — if You Let Them
Shadow technologies can send a chill down the spine of any IT professional tasked with keeping an organization secure. The security risks of shadow technology are well documented and very real. What they fail to account for, though, are the many benefits shadow tech...
Three Benefits of Shadow IT — And How to Harness Them
What is shadow IT? It helps to first define shadow IT, sometimes known as dark IT. Most would start with a rundown of the network security risks it presents, but a more helpful shadow IT definition would explain it as something that’s already happening in your...
Purchasing SSDs in Spring 2017? Here’s what you need to know.
If you want to see the concept of supply and demand in action, look no further than today's storage and memory market. You may have heard rumblings about a dearth of enterprise SSDs in the offing, and those rumblings have come to pass. Here's what you need to know if...
The S3 outage and AWS availability vs. durability
Did the S3 outage suck? Yep. Will the availability vs. durability of AWS continue to be a debate? Inevitably. Is AWS S3 still a good bet? We think so.
What’s Top of Mind in IT?
In December 2016, we began a research effort by categorizing the conversations we have with customers and prospects. We wanted to answer a few questions: Coming into 2017, what are people most interested in and focused on? Are there common themes or project scopes...
Mitigating BlackNurse Denial-of-Service Attacks
In 2016, every company, no matter the size, has an online presence. Whether that is a website, online store front, perhaps a mobile app, or a mail server, chances are your organization has some kind of system in production on the Internet. It has long been established...
High availability and redundancy features in vSphere 6.5
With vSphere 6.5, VMware introduces a new way to bolster uptime for vCenter itself: VCSA High Availability.
From Infrastructure to Workloads. What We’re Talking About Today
Three years ago we were asked a relatively simple question, "Can you get me out of the infrastructure business?"The answer to this question was a function of migrating applications and infrastructure from a customer-site, customer-managed environment to ServerCentral...
7 PowerCLI Learning and Coding Tools I Learned about at VMworld 2016 US
With VMworld 2016 US coming to a close, there’s no time like the present to review one of the major tracks from the conference. Up first, one of the main pillars of VMware automation and scripting: PowerCLI. A PowerCLI primer: PowerCLI is a VMware-focused extension to...
What We Learned @ DevOpsDays Chicago
DevOps supports the applications, infrastructure and, most importantly, the business ... but who is supporting DevOps? Today, every organization, big and small, is scrambling to establish their DevOps strategy. The promise of smooth collaboration and communication...
ServerCentral’s 2016 SOC 2 audit is now available!
Throughout many years of managing audit tasks and compliance programs, the most arduous part has always been gathering the proper artifacts. Did we get the screen shot of one system right? Where did I put that report from our vendor? Who’s seen the monthly...
ServerCentral Partners with Nimble Storage to Expand Managed Cloud Storage Offering
Offering includes dedicated and shared storage options managed by ServerCentral's experts ServerCentral partners with Nimble Storage [NYSE: NMBL] to expand its dedicated and shared managed storage offering. All storage options are fully redundant and managed by...
Deft Named One of ComputerWorld’s Best Places to Work
Deft has been named one of ComputerWorld’s Best Places to Work in the Small Employers segment. We’re honored!
What Are Managed Services?
Every company has their own definition of a managed service. This is ServerCentral’s.What do you manage?Any hardware offered by ServerCentral, including the operating system.What don’t you manage?Applications, software, and customer-provided equipment.Are service...
What is next for your cloud project
In Is "Why?" the Most Important Cloud Question?”, I discussed the importance of knowing why you’re moving to the cloud as a critical success factor for your cloud project. One of the questions I received in response to the post was, “Once I know why we're moving to...
Is “Why?” the Most Important Cloud Question?
The question today isn't IF you are moving to the cloud. Everyone is already in the process of moving to the cloud, or will be in very short order. There are strategic, operational and human capital reasons for this transition - and there is no slowing it down. The...
12 keys to successful private cloud migration planning
The next step after deciding on moving to a private cloud, is mapping out your strategy for a private cloud migration. Cloud migrations are not easy. Cloud migrations are fraught with points of frustration that, according to a Gartner piece by Thomas...
Meet ServerCentral Data Center Technician Dan Arnold
Name: Dan Arnold Worked at ServerCentral since: July 2013 Years of experience in DC Ops: 8 Tell us about a day in the life of a Data Center Technician. DA: I typically wake up around 4 AM to ensure that I am on site and ready by 6 AM. I get a hand-off from the...
An Introduction to ServerCentral’s Managed VMware Cloud Platform
Part I: The Basics of Managed VMware Cloud services ServerCentral’s Managed VMware Cloud utilizes VMware’s vSphere platform. Powered by vCloud Director, we offer on-demand, self-service Managed VMware Cloud services. For those most familiar with VMware private clouds...
Meet ServerCentral Lead Data Center Technician Josh Mills
Name: Josh Mills Worked at ServerCentral since: April 2009 Years of experience in DC Ops: 10-ish Tell us about a day in the life of a Lead Data Center Technician. JM: I'm in a bit of a weird spot with this one. I was the first full-time tech hired at DFT. Since I've...
Get an in-browser remote desktop with Mojolicious and noVNC
Note: This is an excerpt from my blog post originally published on PerlTricks.com. While SSH is a staple of remote system administration, sometimes only a GUI will do. Perhaps the remote system doesn’t have a terminal environment to connect to; perhaps the target...
The End of Safe Harbor And What Comes Next
Under European law, service providers are legally obligated to maintain the levels of security and privacy for personal, non-public information. Because of these protections, data from European users cannot be moved to jurisdictions where the same level of protection...
VMware 101: Virtual network design
Read our take on virtual network design using VMware vSphere.
The 7 biggest data center migration mistakes (and how to avoid them)
Data center migrations aren’t something most people do every day. Here are 7 common migration mistakes people make and how you can avoid them.
How VMware Virtual SAN 6.1 Can Support Your Remote Applications And PoPs
With the ecommerce industry growing each year, international business is no longer an enterprise-only sport. With small and midsize companies entering the global footprint game, their IT infrastructure needs to follow suit as they seek to engage and keep customers...
5 Key Questions: Disaster Recovery as a Service
In previous posts, we highlighted 5 Key Questions to Ask Your Backup as a Service Provider and 5 Key Questions to Ask Your Replication as as Service Provider. In this final post of our BC/DR series, we’ve compiled a list of 5 key questions you should ask a provider...
5 key questions: Replication as a Service
Check out this list of the questions you should ask your service provider before buying a new managed replication solution.
Scaling ZFS on Linux to many CPUs
As servers have gained CPU cores, locking within OpenZFS has become a bottleneck for some highly-parallel workloads. This posting describes my entree to the world of high-concurrency performance testing of ZFS on Linux (ZoL). In February 2015, I posted the first pull...
Meet ServerCentral Data Center Technician Lorenzo Martinez
[10:45] jamiefaithlowe: i need a fun fact about your dog for your picture caption.[10:47] Lorenzo Martinez: my wife can't tell who snores louder, me or Frances.[10:47] Lorenzo Martinez: and in the summer, we take her to all the street fests. she gets all the...
Meet ServerCentral Data Center Technician Chris “The Centaur” Dunn
Name: Chris "The Centaur" DunnWorked at ServerCentral since: 2011Years of experience: 40+Tell me about a day in the life of a Data Center Ops Technician.CD: *BUZZ* Please replace this broken hard drive.*BUZZ* Please interconnect these two rack switches that are in the...
Meet ServerCentral Data Center Technician Beau Breeden
Tell me about a day in the life of a Data Center Ops Technician.BB: Things never get boring around here. I’ll move from a Linux install to a RAM upgrade to running fiber all before lunch. Every ticket that comes in has different requirements, priority, and difficulty....
5 Reasons You Should Care About Data Center Compliance
Day by day, businesses across the world are moving more of their operations to the cloud, relying heavily on cloud service providers to protect and secure their data from theft and loss. If they haven't dipped their toes in the big pool of cloud, maybe they've hired a...
Cybersecurity facts I thought were cool
Here’s a cool cybersecurity fact taught by experts in the field: hackers exploit weaknesses in people, not software.
We’re Hiring A Linux System Administrator
Jacks of all trades, masters of...ALL! ServerCentral is looking for the ultimate Linux System Administrator to join our team. We're hiring a Linux System Administrator that is technically adept, thrives on trimming 10ms from page load times, and lives for system...
Choose Your Cloud Partner Wisely
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been talking with dozens of technology leaders from startups and early-stage companies. I wanted to learn about the technical challenges they face today and understand what they feel they need to be successful.Out of the hundreds of data...
5 Keys for Successful Startup Partnerships
How many times have you started an email, text, or phone call with this statement:Sorry I’m so behind in getting back to you…More times than you can count, right?We’ve all been there.Don’t worry. Having worked with more than a handful of startups (some successful,...
How to correctly size power requirements for server racks
Here’s how to correctly size your power requirements for server racks.
ServerCentral’s On-Site Parts Depot
It's a huge pain to go to the data center when hardware fails — especially when you live far away. Servers don't break at convenient times, either. Often it's at 2 AM, rush hour, or the moment you sit down to watch a new episode of Rick & Morty. So not only do you...
Is Low Redundancy Infrastructure Right for You?
Data Center Knowledge’s recent article, As Tenants Get Smarter About Data Center Availability, They Want More Options, discusses how companies can save money by reducing infrastructure redundancy. This concept has been a topic of conversation ever since.After 15+...
Customer Portal Tips and Tricks
Our customer portal makes it easier than ever to manage your data center environment. Here are some tips and tricks.
ServerCentral Partners with Zerto
[CHICAGO, Illinois] – ServerCentral introduced its global Disaster Recover as a Service (DRaaS) solution designed to protect applications and data from downtime and provide horizontal scalability. The company’s DRaaS solution leverages Zerto Virtual Replication, a...
Preventing Data Loss with RAID
Learn how to prevent data loss with RAID. For a relatively small investment, RAID provides significant protection against failure.
Bringing sanity to routing over IPsec
With SCTG’s networking background, we’re often asked why we implement routing over IPsec tunnels a certain way. Here’s why we do it the way we do.
IPsec parameter choice rationales
On the previous episode of As The IPsec Tunnel Churns, we discussed how IPsec configurations running in tunnel mode are established. This week, let’s get into the nitty gritty of why those parameters were chosen. So, why did we choose those particular parameters? The...
Optimizing IPsec tunnels
Learn how IPsec configurations running in tunnel mode are established.
Which Cloud Is Right For You?
The cloud is easy when you know what you need.Select how much CPU, memory, storage, and bandwidth you want. Click. Order. Compute. Something like that.If you’re not sure what you need, however, the ease with which you can purchase and get locked into a cloud can...
Ask 10 People What The Cloud Is, Get 11 Answers
I asked a number of people:“What is the cloud?”There were three trends present in all of their responses:Location:The cloud is not confined to my office. It is not confined to my premise.Scaling Up:Gives me more of everything when I need it.Scaling Down:Gives me less...
What Is Object Storage?
Object storage uses inexpensive commodity hardware to provide petabytes of resilient space.To understand object storage, we first need to understand how it differs from traditional block and file storage.Block storage is the base for all storage.This storage can be a...
5 Odd Excuses for Data Center Outages
Here are some of the craziest reasons for data center outages. 1) Squirrels These nut-cheeked, bushy-tailed rodents chew through cables like Willy Wonka's Violet chews through gum. At one point, Level 3 Communications actually attributed 17% of fiber cuts to "squirrel...
