Resource Library

There are many interesting new issues that seem to have come with the addition of voice and video to the data network. Most of the engineers that are now working on VoIP networks come from either a pure data network background or a traditional phone system background...

There are some common misconceptions on the part of some of my students as to how VPN sessions are established from either a remote location or remote user to the ASA firewall. In particular, a “gray area” seems to be when the attributes from the tunnel group are app...

In 2013, VMware announced VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN), which is VMware's native version of Software Defined Storage (SDS). It is simple, easy to setup and managed by user-defined policies. This paper explains VSAN, its basic requirements and how it works.

One of the most important steps in mastering a new technology is learning the associated terminology or vocabulary. In the IT field, this can be a very challenging step, as much of the terminology is often used inconsistently. This white paper defines the terminology associated with IT virtualization. It is mainly vendor-agnostic, but it does provide some vendor-specific terms, product names, and feature names used by VMware, Citrix, and Microsoft.

In the previous post, we discussed the need for VXLAN in the cloud along with the issues it solves. In this post, we will focus more on how VXLAN works.

In this white paper, you'll discover what SAP BusinessObjects and Web Intelligence can deliver. When it comes to accessing large amounts of data and then creating customized and sophisticated analytical reports, you'll see why Web Intelligence is a wise choice.

Cyber resilience is becoming a bigger issue for all organizations. But what does “good cyber resilience” look like? And how do you get there?

Cloud and virtualization technologies have spawned a whole ecosystem of applications. But like any powerful technology, they can be used for bad as well as good. This session reviews the top 10 most common mistakes made in cloud and virtualization security.

Thinking about getting ITIL certified? In this post, we cover the value of each ITIL certification and dive into survey results to determine whether ITIL certifications are worth it. The results are in!

Microsoft’s Excel program is a staple in many business environments, but very few people take full advantage of this tool. This webinar is a great opportunity to introduce yourself to formulas, data validation, pivot tables, and power query.  

Power BI is a business analytics solution that lets you visualize your data and share insights across your organization or embed them in your app or website. Connect to hundreds of data sources and bring your data to life with live dashboards and reports. Join us during this recorded webinar to see what Power BI can do for you and your organization.

This paper provides an overview of how to judge the rigor of one's decision making. It describes how anyone can make better (higher quality) decisions, in any situation.

Kirsten Lora, Global Knowledge Senior Product Director, explains why business analysts are essential to organizations and how our Business Analysis Essentials and Business Process Analysis courses can help them in these roles

Scrum serves as a framework for the development of software and other products. It helps teams collaborate and provides a way to address challenges and changes in order to deliver a high value product. The Scrum Master promotes and supports the framework (Scrum). A Certified Scrum Master (CSM) helps everyone understand Scrum theory, practices, rules, and values.

Learn about the Amazon Web Services platform, products, and services. Gain on-demand access to compute, storage, and database services without upfront costs.

With blockchain constantly in the news, business leaders are not only asking themselves what it is but most importantly, what’s in it for me and my business. If you’ve asked those questions, this webinar is for you! In it you will not only learn what blockchain is, but understand its impact and potential for your business. We will demonstrate some of its immediate use cases in technology, business, and enterprise products and institutions.

Global Knowledge Course Director and Lab Topology Architect Joey DeWiele, a specialist in Unified Communications, discusses Cisco Unity, Unity Connection & Unity Express.

Learn about Cloud Computing with AWS and the benefits AWS provides to hundreds of thousands of customers globally.

Driven by recent increases in cryptocurrency values, Cryptojacking is poised to be the center of conversation in 2018. It’s one of the latest innovations in hacking in which a victim’s computer is enlisted to mine cryptocurrency. Unlike ransomware, this attack steals processor cycles in an attempt to mine Monero and other currencies, typically without the user’s knowledge or consent. Watch this timely 1-hour webinar where we will discuss – A quick overview of cryptocurrencies. A walk-through of a typical attack. The economics of the attackers. Possible mitigation strategies to keep you and your organization safe. With miners trying to take advantage of the rising cryptocurrency industry, join us as we investigate this cyber-crime and learn how you can protect yourself and your organization. View our complete Cybersecurity curriculum for courses that help you build fundamental to advanced cybersecurity techniques, prepare for top industry-recognized certifications or master product-specific skills.

Networks are under attack as hackers try to access systems to compromise or steal sensitive data and information. Understand the threats posed by malware, ransomware and social engineering.

Project quality management is the process of determining the quality standards that are applicable to a project and devising a way to satisfy them. Learn more here.

Software-defined networking (SDN) is a solution that will enable your organization to meet the demands of network programmability and automation. The result will be greater network agility to support new applications while complying with increasing security needs.

Organizations that plan for and conduct supplier management according to defined processes and boundaries are more likely to receive predictable, high-quality goods and services from their suppliers in a timely manner.

To understand the difference between Ethernet II and 802.3, you first must know how Ethernet works. While Ethernet cables transmit data, their role is relatively simple compared to that of the Ethernet card — also referred to as an adapter. It’s within the function of this card that you find the differences between Ethernet II and 802.3.

Let's start with defining the job of a cloud architect. You are responsible for planning, designing, migrating, and implementing cloud-based infrastructures, but the effectiveness of these specialists is not guaranteed.

The cloud has been around for over a decade, but great cloud engineers are in short supply. What sets a great cloud engineer apart from simply a good one? Experience plays a big part, and the general expectation seems to be that you will become great by putting in your time. However, the truth is that to be a great cloud engineer you do not just slowly grow into your role. You actively aim for ways to improve both your skills and your approach to using technology. Here are three examples of what great cloud engineers do to be highly successful.

There are many questions you should ask before selecting your PaaS provider. Learn what you need to know in order to compare and contrast PaaS with the other offerings like IaaS and SaaS, and what they require in terms of setup and configuration. As with any decision involving IT infrastructure there are many variables that should be considered to ensure you find a solution that will fit your current and future needs, budget and support requirements.

There are many considerations in deciding on whether to provide Software as a Service (SaaS) to others or whether to become a consumer. This white paper will explore what questions and factors you should keep in mind as you seek to implement SaaS. Considerations include deciding how your application will be accessed, implementing disaster recovery, scheduling platform maintenance and upgrades, handling service outages and creating a security plan. This knowledge can be useful whether you are provider of SaaS applications or are planning to be a consumer using software for activities like accounting or project management.

The bad guys just keep getting better! No matter how much patching and tweaking we do, the bad guys' constantly changing tactics and techniques continue harming our networks, stealing and damaging data, and just generally screw things up. What motivates someone to do such terrible things in the first place? How have these hackers changed and improved? What kinds of attacks are popular now and why? In this hour-long webinar, security expert, former hacker and Global Knowledge instructor Phillip D. Shade will provide insight into understanding the latest hacking techniques, what the current threat landscape looks like, and suggested countermeasures to mitigate threats. He will include specific examples of the current threat landscape, including data mining, social engineering cyber threat terminology, man-in-the- middle attacks and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks.

The advantage--and disadvantage--of IaaS cloud computing is complete control. The user is responsible for sizing, installing, and maintaining operating systems and applications, backing up the systems, etc. This enables the user to configure everything in an optimal way for the workloads that need to be accomplished, but it requires time and effort to determine how it should be set up, secured, etc. With the goal of providing a good place for you to start your IaaS implementation and highlighting some areas that you should plan for and design for, Global Knowledge instructor John Hales provides a review of IaaS, as well as insight into what you need to know before implementing IaaS. He also shares a laundry list of things to consider when implementing IaaS, including questions to ask yourself, your company and your potential cloud provider.

A career in Cybersecurity means being a lifelong learner. New attacks are constantly being invented, and cybersecurity engineers must respond to them in new ways. This video introduces a new supply chain attack, which provides a fascinating glimpse into the incredible skills of state sponsored professional hackers.

The SolarWinds cyberattack is one of the most sophisticated and broad cyberattacks in history and will likely be studied for years by cybersecurity researchers as a case study for a supply chain attack. 

ITIL is generally not prescriptive. In reality, the CSI Register at any given organization might look significantly different than the example given in the CSI book. The fields given in this example are important. 

The way Microsoft certifies Azure skills has changed. In this recorded webinar, we’ll cover what these changes mean for your Azure Certification path.

What’s the difference between high availability and fault tolerance in VMware vSphere? This article elaborates on first configuring high availability and then layer on the fault tolerance capability. Learn more.

The key difference between hubs, switches and bridges is that hubs operate at Layer 1 of the OSI model, while bridges and switches work with MAC addresses at Layer 2 of the OSI model.

Our IT Skills & Salary Survey revealed the average AWS certified salary was over 100k - how's that for AWS certification value? Read on for more!

I’d like to share some best practices for training BI administrators and architects in your organization. Because they will ultimately lead a major BI upgrade, administrators need training before a major project begins, not a few days or weeks before a go-live like other stakeholders. While there are many facets to upgrading your SAP BI system, I’m focusing on the need for BI architects and administrators to understand the BI4 platform’s new tools, new architecture and new monitoring capabilities.

According to Cisco marketing, Dynamic Multipoint VPN (DMVPN) “will lower capital and operation expenses, simplifies branch communications, reduces deployment complexity, and improves business resiliency.” Okay. But what is it, really, and why should we care?

That depends on their configurations. For example: While it makes very good sense to include redundant physical links in a network, connecting switches in loops, without taking the appropriate measures, will cause havoc on a network. Without the correct measures, a switch floods broadcast frames out all of its ports, causing serious problems for the network devices. The main problem is a broadcast storm where broadcast frames are flooded through every switch until all available bandwidth is used and all network devices have more inbound frames than they can process.

Now that the network is installed, each switch has a bridge ID number, and the root switch has been elected, the next step is for each switch to perform a calculation to determine the best link to the root switch. Each switch will do this by comparing the path cost for each link based on the speed. For paths that go through one or more other switches, the link costs are added. The switch compares this aggregate value to the other link costs to determine the best path to the root switch.

ITIL describes a service portfolio as a collection of the overall set of services managed by a service provider. A service portfolio describes a service provider’s boundaries and promises across all of the customers and market spaces it serves. I like to think of a service portfolio as describing the past, present, and future collection of services offered by a service provider. The figure below shows a high-level view of a service portfolio.

Learn about the five types of area networks.

Multiplexing is the technology that is able to combine multiple communication signals together in order for them to traverse an otherwise single signal communication medium simultaneously. Multiplexing can be applied to both analog and digital signals. A benefit of using multiplexing, or muxing, is reducing the physical hardware cost for expensive dedicated network communication segments, such as copper or fiber cables.

Modern quality management and project management are complementary. They both emphasize customer satisfaction and the underlying belief that quality leads to customer satisfaction. The main objective in quality management is making sure that the project meets the needs it was originally created to meet—nothing more, nothing less. In other words, to ensure quality, you must meet the needs of the stakeholder.

The Cisco UCS is truly a “unified” architecture that integrates three major datacenter technologies into a single, coherent system: Computing Network Storage Instead of being simply the next generation of blade servers, the Cisco UCS is an innova­tive architecture designed from scratch to be highly scalable, efficient, and powerful with one-third less infrastructure than traditional blade servers.

The most obvious difference is that hubs operate at Layer 1 of the OSI model while bridges and switches work with MAC addresses at Layer 2 of the OSI model. Hubs are really just multi-port repeaters. They ignore the content of an Ethernet frame and simply resend every frame they receive out every interface on the hub. The challenge is that the Ethernet frames will show up at every device attached to a hub instead of just the intended destination (a security gap), and inbound frames often collide with outbound frames (a performance issue).

“Twisted Pair” is another way to identify a network cabling solution that’s also called Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) and was invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1881. Indoor business telephone applications use them in 25-pair bundles. In homes, they were down to four wires, but in networking we use them in 8-wire cables. By twisting the pairs at different rates (twists per foot), cable manufacturers can reduce the electromagnetic pulses coming from the cable while improving the cable’s ability to reject common electronic noise from the environment.

Good question! There are lots of networks, so I’m sorry to say that it depends. Let me explain. The smallest computer-based networks are usually PANs or Personal Area Networks. They can connect a wireless keyboard, mouse, or other devices to a computer. You may find them wirelessly linking a printer to your computer. You may have noticed these all include wireless connections. A PAN most often uses wireless technologies like infrared and Bluetooth, so it is really a WPAN (Wireless Personal Area Network).

Avaya introduced IP Office Manager Release 9.1 on December 22, 2014. As we all know from working with IP Office Manager, every new release brings changes to its GUI. Use this white paper to help you prepare to install and administer IP Office Manager 9.1.

CompTIA has raised the bar for Network+ candidates. The new certification exam has significant changes to the five "domains" or knowledge areas with new content related to security, cloud, data-center and operational concerns and troubleshooting. There is also a greater emphasis on wireless networking and VoIP. Use this white paper to help you gain an overview of what's new and what's different.

vSphere 5.5 is now available with myriad small improvements such as a faster Web Client, LACP, Autoscale and higher configuration maximums. In addition, there are changes coming such as VSAN, which may be ground-breaking in regard to VM storage of the future. Since the release of vSphere 5.5, they have not yet announced a change to the blueprint for the test. That being the case, I will say, for now, that the VCP-510 test should remain unchanged as well. My goal here is not to reeducate you on everything that you need to know for the test; instead, it is to point out the few changes that might apply in your company or organization.

VMware vSphere 8 is the enterprise workload platform that brings the benefits of cloud to on-premises workloads. It supercharges performance with DPU and GPU based acceleration, enhances operational efficiency through the VMware Cloud Console, seamlessly integrates with add-on hybrid cloud services, and accelerates innovation with an enterprise-ready integrated Kubernetes runtime that runs containers alongside VMs.

Whether you've already upgraded to Windows 10 or you're interested to learn more, this webinar will help familiarize you with the major updates and features. Join Microsoft instructor, John Panagakos, for an hour-long webinar that will dive into the exciting new features Windows 10 has to offer.

No matter what book or manual you use to study for the CCNA examination, you will see various protocols and processes referencing an RFC. And, although frequently referenced, the RFCs are seldom actually included in the documentation. So, the logical question becomes...

With the advent of video use in our everyday communications, a number of questions commonly surface. One of them is the question of terminology. What's the difference between video conferencing and telepresence? What is meant by immersive technologies? Frankly, there is no one single right answer.

It’s common knowledge that earning an AWS certification is a great way to qualify your experience in the eyes of your peers and employer and to increase your organization’s proficiency with AWS-based applications. However, there is another benefit that has not be quantified until now. Results from the 2015 IT Skills and Salary Survey conducted by Global Knowledge and Windows IT Pro revealed that the average pay of four AWS certifications exceeded $100,000. While there is no guarantee that a certification equals a six-figure salary, it certainly couldn’t hurt.

This is another topic of heated debate, and it changes from network to network, but I found a simple approach that works in most cases. Since I have four queues and four classes of traffic, I need to categorize my important traffic into four classes. Strictly for explanation purposes I took some liberty in defining four categories of traffic that are very effective in both large and small networks. These classes are: Real Time Protocol (RTP), Network Management (NetMgt), Business Critical, and the Default.

Most of us have been involved with an e-Learning design project that has not delivered its intended impact. Across organizations, remarkably similar but preventable mistakes are made in the design and development of e-Learning that can frustrate learners, reduce effectiveness and ultimately impede success. Small missteps early in the design process can lead to costly problems in the development and implementation stages. This session will present 5 common mistakes e-Learning professionals make. For each mistake, evidence-based best practices will also be shared to help prevent their occurrence in the future. The evidence-based best practices can serve as a design guide for successful e-Learning projects of all types. Finally, approaches will also be discussed to help organizations integrate evidence-based best practices into their e-Learning design efforts.

Everyone has been involved in a learning program or project that has not delivered its intended impact. Across organizations, remarkably similar but preventable missteps are made in needs identification, learning strategies, program development and implementation.  Instructor Tom Gram, Senior Director of Professional Services at Global Knowledge, will present six classic mistakes learning professionals make that reduce chances for success along with evidence-based practices to help prevent them. 

One of the main weapons of organized crime on the Internet is the use of junk email, also called spam. Hackers use spam for a number of purposes such as selling counterfeit products (medicines, particularly) to steal your personal or financial information, or to infect your computer with spyware and malware. This malicious software can then hijack your computer and your Internet connection to help propagate itself.

Answer? When it is flagged as a retransmission in Wireshark!

The Open Group Architectural Framework (TOGAF) provides a structure for describing all transformational work within an enterprise. While TOGAF focuses on the role of an enterprise's architects, it also very much addresses the space in which business analysts (BAs) play. This can lead to role confusion, blurred deliverables, and duplicate work. In this one-hour webinar, business analysis expert and Global Knowledge instructor Adam McClellan will focus on those parts of TOGAF in which the business analyst is typically the most active, and he will outline how the analyst's work contributes to the broader architecture. He will also provide perspective for architects who work with BAs and for BAs interested in the architecture disciplines.

The technologies examined reduce operational expenses (OpEx), not capital expenses (CapEx) that has traditionally been the focus of virtualization. Many companies implemented virtualization with the goal of saving money in the form of fewer servers to buy with a side benefit of reducing the footprint of the servers and lowering the required power and cooling. Most of the savings were in capital, but do not expect the same with many of the technologies listed here, because some may even require some additional capital expenditures, at least for software, in order to save on the day-to-day operations of IT. The bigger cost in running an IT department is in the OpEx category anyway, so savings there are recurring.

In my last post, we learned that the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a computer networking protocol used by hosts, identified as DHCP clients, to retrieve IP address assignments and other configuration information. DHCP uses a client-server architectur...

Discover the top-paying and most popular AWS certifications from the IT Skills and Salary Report. Learn how to get certified and unlock IT career opportunities.

Kirsten Lora, Global Knowledge Senior Product Director, explains the difference between our Business Analysis Essentials course and Business Process Analysis course.

The short answer (and a common one in our industry): it depends. When comparing Cisco IOS with Juniper Junos, the decision to choose one over the other is difficult and often boils down to cost. Of course, there are other factors to consider.

I recently responded to a message on LinkedIn from a regular reader of this blog. He asked several questions which I will answer over the course of several posts. As part of his first question, he described a strategy report that his group is producing. The audience for this strategy report considers ITIL important to the future of their business, and so he must describe which ITIL processes his data center operations group works most closely with.

Systems Administrators, or SysAdmins for short, are most often frontline IT staff who are problem-solvers, (metaphorical) fire extinguish-ers, and, simply, doers.

This webinar covers the evolution from physical servers to VMs to containers and the driving factors behind this change. We explain why containers are useful in an enterprise environment and why they are so popular with developers and administrators. In addition, we list the available container solutions on AWS (Elastic Container Services – ECS, Elastic Kubernetes Services – EKS, and Fargate), GCP (Google Kubernetes Engine – GKE), and Azure (Azure Container Instances – ACI and Azure Kubernetes Service – AKS).   View the slide deck>

Examine the evolution from physical servers to VMs to containers and the driving factors behind this change. Also review the available container management solutions on AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. 

Cybersecurity is one of the most important fields of work in our world today. It’s an ever-changing discipline that requires ongoing education and adaptability, even for cybersecurity experts.

As organizations struggle to balance budgets and prioritize training, skills gaps are growing—75% of North American decision-makers report existing skills shortages. And the impacts are potentially disastrous. With so much on the line, initial and ongoing training are instrumental to project and organizational success.

Instructor-led training (ILT) allows the student to attend a live class taught by a subject matter expert they can interact with. When you need to gain skills that provide a high benefit or pose a critical risk to your business, instructor-led training guarantees your highest chance of success.  

This year, CISSP-certified IT professionals have the third highest global salary ($116,573) and the 10th highest in North America ($123,815). This is nothing new—CISSP has ranked in the top 10 in the U.S. each year since 2015, even coming in first in 2018. CISSP is a top-paying certification year after year. But how has it remained so relevant and valuable?

Michael Scarborough and Ryan Ballmer, co-authors of Global Knowledge ITIL courseware, discuss why ITIL is important to businesses.

Watch this recorded webinar to understand the basics of the Risk Management Framework (prescribed by NIST Standards) and how to begin to apply it.  

The use of public networks is risky. Whether wireless or wired, any public access Internet connection is putting you and your data at risk. It may be convenient to use a hotel, restaurant, or coffee shop Internet link, but the likelihood of attack or compromise is greater than accessing a private network.