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In this post I’ll focus on a topic that’s mentioned in the Cisco FIREWALL training class but isn’t emphasized there or in the online Cisco ASA documentation. When configuring failover on a pair of ASA security appliances, a situation can arise in which network disruption occurs due to the secondary ASA in a failover pair becoming active first and then the primary comes online second. Both the documentation and the courseware point out that this causes the secondary (and active ASA) to swap its interface MAC addresses with those of the primary. Being naturally skeptical about this behavior, I decided to investigate. The rest of this post illustrates my confirmation of this phenomenon.

Diane Teare, Global Knowledge's Cisco Course Director, discusses the advantages to taking our CCNA Boot Camp.

In the fourth of his five-part series, Eric Strause explores the hardware and application benefits inherent in a cloud-based architecture.

Projects are a social endeavor. Traditional project management approaches have shied away from the social advantages a more agile project environment brings. By nature, we are storytelling, pattern seeking and social people. We need colocation to shine truly in a project environment.

For smaller companies, configuring a dial plan to account for variations in dialed numbers is often not a problem. However, companies that are larger and more global in nature encounter a number of issues when designing their dial plan approach.

In reviewing the list of best-paying jobs in IT, you’ll see some areas you might expect like cloud computing and other areas you probably didn’t, like business technology or enterprise infrastructure management. The top 10 functional areas are based on the 2016 IT Skills and Salary Survey conducted by Global Knowledge in October 2015. Note that all references to “average” represent the mean, not the median or other statistical measures.

In this article, we discuss how to achieve that optimal security approach in the data center with Cisco Application Centric Architecture, or ACI.

This webinar will look at Border Gateway Protocol and explore why we have the protocol; how its involved and how it works. We will look at how and where BGP is used in today’s networks and Internet. We will look at the basics of configuring it and some not so basic configurations.  

As I’ve stated before, I like Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). I think it’s an interesting protocol, and yes — it’s complicated, but I guess that part of why I like it. There are a lot of knobs to tweak in BGP, maybe too many, but that’s another post. Anyway, we are now running BGP version 4 and it has had extensions written that support more than just IPv4 unicast routing. We now have IPv4 multicast, IPv6 unicast and multicast, VPNv4, VPNv6, and a few others.

Every data center has unique hardware and software requirements that can pose significant management challenges to IT. Cloud utilization, virtualization, mobile device management, app development, security, and storage networking represent just a few of the management challenges facing IT today. Add to that the responsibility of providing the infrastructure for processing an exponential increase in data and making it available to an increasingly mobile workforce on a daily basis.

The process of learning how to subnet IP addresses begins with understanding binary numbers and decimal conversions along with the basic structure of IPv4 addresses. This paper focuses on the mathematics of binary numbering and IP address structure.

Learn more about the Blended Live delivery format from Global Knowledge.

During this Blockchain overview webinar we will discuss what blockchain is, how it can provide value, and how it is currently being used by organizations around the world to effect transformative organizational change. View the slide deck>  

ITIL® 4 Foundation Bridge is a new Global Knowledge course that addresses the specific needs of professionals who have already achieved the ITIL v3 Foundation certification and wish to upgrade to ITIL 4. 

IT organizations are increasingly being held accountable to bring digital value to the business and participate as a strategic partner. To this end, IT organizations must ensure they have the right skills at the right time to support the strategic direction of the business and contribute overall ROI. Deploying an IT skills framework provides an opportunity for IT organizations to determine their level of readiness by identifying where skill gaps exist.

Explore how Azure provides easy-to-use services to help you get started with building Data and AI solutions. Learn about many areas of AI, including machine learning, and how many modern applications and services depend on predictive machine learning models. We will also talk about the fundamentals of database concepts in a cloud environment and how to build your foundational knowledge of cloud data services within Azure.

More challenging Microsoft certification exams require the demanding Microsoft boot camps at Global Knowledge. Rebuilt from the ground up to provide students all the study tools needed to master the Microsoft skills needed to certify and succeed.

Many companies have a so-called five-nines goal, meaning that the network needs to be available to the users at least 99.999% of the time. To achieve that goal, IT professionals must consider high availability in the network design, including both physical and logical redundancy.

Despite advances in security, hackers continue to break through network defenses. In this hour-long webinar, network security specialist Catherine Paquet will examine the favorite methods and targets of hackers and will introduce you to the different categories of security technologies. In this foundational presentation, you will learn about the benefits of security solutions such as firewalls, VPNs, IPS, identity services and BYOD.

In this second webinar in a series dedicated to building up network security, network security specialist Catherine Paquet will fill you in on advanced threat protection that integrates real-time contextual awareness, intelligent security automation and superior performance with industry-leading network intrusion prevention, Sourcefire.

The benefits of a RADIUS server are many. In addition to speed, you receive heightened security with user access monitoring, reporting and tracking functions and personalized restrictions. Setting it up costs less than $60 and this white paper walks you through each of the steps, settings, configurations and the equipment you will need.

A quick 30 minute introduction to Business Analysis for those who are considering the field. This webinar looks at why the BA is essential to the business, what BAs do, and certification paths for Business Analysts. View the slide deck>

A quick 30 minute introduction to Business Analysis for those who are considering the field. This webinar looks at why the BA is essential to the business, what BAs do, and certification paths for Business Analysts. View the slide deck>

Business processes are complicated, and mapping them is not a trivial task. Modelling standards give us the tools to model complex processes, but they do not tell us the best way to approach a model or effectively use the tool. In this hour-long webinar, Global Knowledge instructor Rod Fage will guide you through the best way to develop a model, from determining the goal and scope of the process and measuring its effectiveness, to modelling the process in a hierarchical top-down approach, enabling business analyst to continuously validate the model.

Organizations launch projects with the assumption that the new or improved solution will provide worthwhile benefits for stakeholders and a suitable return on investment. By understanding your business requirements you ensure that your teams actually deliver those benefits. Keeping user and functional requirements aligned with the business requirements is a key to successful solution delivery.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) planning is the process of developing the plans, processes and procedures to respond to the range of incidents. We start with understanding the essential functions of an organization, called Business Impact Analysis (BIA). In life, we set the same priorities: protection of family and friends, shelter, food and water and other life-giving essentials.

Business and IT alignment is not a one-and-done thing. On the contrary, business strategies and goals continually evolve and cascade down to more specific needs throughout the enterprise — including IT. To stay aligned with the business, the IT side of the house should consistently ensure that it and the business both understand what outcomes are desired in strategic, tactical, and operational contexts. At the same time, IT should build up the disciplines required to enable — and ultimately track — those outcomes.

When integrating a Voice over IP (VoIP) system into an existing network it is very important to have a good understanding of how much bandwidth is utilized for each call on the network. For most people, just starting out the bandwidth calculations can be a very daunt...

Call Admission Control (CAC) is often times included as part of the same topic as Quality of Service (QoS), when in actuality CAC is a separate and complete topic itself. QoS is defined as traffic engineering on a packet switched network. This definition means movin...

Agile is a set of principles requiring a significant cultural shift, new paradigms in thinking and team organization. Over the years, Agile has become "productized" or in many cases "institutionalized", creating different flavours and levels of commitment among teams and organizations. Along the way, managers and team members have lost sight of Agile's principles and tried to enforce the use of certain tools and structure where they may not belong. In this one hour webinar, Perry McLeod will explain how tools such as use cases can be successful in an agile environment, provided the principles of agile are always active in the minds of the managers and the team members that are using them. Join Perry to determine whether or not making the cultural shift towards the use case method in an agile environment is the right move for you and your organization.

I am a VMware Certified Instructor and every single time I teach, I get questions regarding certification. IT certifications always seem to be a controversial topic, and the question is always, "Why should I become certified?"

Early one morning, an engineer end user discovered that the Engineer servers were unreachable, and he didn’t know if he could reach the Internet. The administrator investigated the user’s PC with the IPCONFIG /ALL command and verified that the PC was a DHCP client, but it had received an address from the Accounting DHCP server, not the Engineering DHCP server.

This week we'll review the IPv4 Address Classes including subnet masks, examples of Class C, Class B, and Class A subnet masks, and planning IPv4 addresses.

What path you decide to take to earn your Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) Routing and Switching certification will depend on a number of factors including your availability, willingness to work long hours and your ability to absorb a lot of information in a short period of time. This white paper includes self-assessments and training recommendations to help you figure out if taking the CCNAX Routing and Switching Boot Camp or taking two separate ICND1 and ICND2 courses is the best fit for you.

This webinar is examining the process of how to best prepare for the Cisco Certified Network Professional in Enterprise skill set. We will look at the process to become certified including which exams to take; look at the available resources for study, including the blueprint for the exams and courses that are applicable. We will look at why someone might want to get certified as a CCNP Enterprise. We will also examine the process to maintain the certification. View slide deck>>

The value of IT certifications has grown considerably over the last decade. Examine the evolution of certification trends, see the top-paying certifications and learn how decision-makers are struggling to hire certified employees.

Change is no longer an isolated event. In the digital world, professional and personal change is constant. It is the new normal. Today's leaders and teams are asked to handle relentless upheavals, while still being expected to deliver on their short-term goals. To succeed, they must toggle between the often-conflicting priorities of today's profits and tomorrow's growth. Organizational change management has been documented and many approaches exist; the same can be said for personal change. But rarely have organizations holistically thought about how these two drivers of positive change can collectively enable ongoing success. Join Jocelyn Bérard, Global Knowledge Vice President, International Leadership and Business Solutions, and Phil Buckley, Managing Director at Change with Confidence, for this informative hour-long webinar to learn a powerful and practical framework to help you manage organizational and personal change.

In this video, instructor Glenn Weadock examines new Taskbar capabilities, such as pinning non-loaded programs, customizing the jump list, and selectively hiding all but one active program.

The new Solution Specializations are designed to more closely align to the offers and solutions delivered by partners to their customers.

Global Knowledge Course Director and Lab Topology Architect Joey DeWiele, a specialist in Unified Communications, explains the difference between Cisco's Call Manager Express & Call Manager.

Understand the two training options to prepare for the CCNA Routing and Switching certification - traditional and accelerated. Global Knowledge allows you to learn at your pace. The traditional training path features two courses, ICND1 and ICND2, and ten days of training. The accelerated training path combines the content found in ICND1 and ICND2 into a single 5 day course, the CCNAX Routing and Switching Boot Camp. Learn which option is best for you.

As the sophistication, stealth, and frequency of cybersecurity threats continue to increase, the complexity of attacks means every organization needs security expertise before, during, and after an attack. For this reason, the demand for cybersecurity operations (CyberOps) personnel keeps going up.

The Cisco Certified Network Professional Enterprise is built on the longstanding and well-recognized CCNP Routing and Switching. With the addition of evolving technologies, this makes the certification current and relevant. Having a vendor certification can be hit or miss, depending on the vendor, but with Cisco holding a major percentages of market share in the different technologies and implementations in the networking industry, having a CCNP Enterprise on your resume offers several advantages.

On February 17, 2015, Cisco announced changes to the existing voice and video certifications and detailed the new collaboration certification portfolio. This white paper provides an overview of the changes to Cisco certifications with respect to voice and video, outlining dates, and deadlines that may affect your certification process.

Your clients, vendors and workforce don't always operate in the same building, state or country. Cisco Collaboration Endpoint products make communicating with your counterparts across town or on the other side of the world easy. This white paper provides you with product specifications and capabilities for Cisco's phone, desktop, and large screen immersive videoconferencing options.

Security attacks have become more advanced; therefore, security solutions have needed to evolve to deal with those threats. Cisco's acquisition of Sourcefire brings a new paradigm to the security landscape. No longer is security a one-time, instantaneous event. Security now is threat based, network cognizant, and continuous. All organizations, public and private, need to be aware not only of the constantly changing threat environment, but must be prepared to respond in kind.

Instructor Carol Kavalla talks about the advantages of taking a Cisco Data Center Unified Fabric Implementation class from Global Knowledge.

Learn how Cisco FabricPath combines the benefits of Layer 2 Switching and Layer 3 Routing, allowing for the scalability and flexibility of Layer 2 while supporting traditional Layer 3 components such as optimal paths, equal cost multipath routing and a Time to Live (TTL) field.

Network switching skills are fundamental to administering and maintaining computer networking. This webinar reviews fundamental networking skills from a Cisco perspective. Technical professionals looking to take the next step into Cisco specific networking technologies will benefit from this information. View the slide deck>

Cisco Learning Credits (CLCs) are prepaid training vouchers that make planning for your success easier when purchasing Cisco products and services.

This overview of the Cisco On-Demand Learning portfolio covers the various products and solutions available. Including all access collections, certification e-camps, and individual course titles.  With Cisco On-Demand Learning you can train your workforce easily and effectively.

In support of software-defined networking, Cisco has introduced several products to strengthen networks and meet the increased demand for flexible and cost-efficient solutions. The Cisco SDN solution in the data center is ACI. Outside the data center the primary Cisco solution is DNA.

Meet Global Knowledge course director and lab topology architect Joey DeWiele, a specialist in Unified Communications. Joey will walk you through the benefits of our exclusive Cisco UC lab architecture - a more scalable and stable approach to the all-important labs featured in unified communications courses. Our labs feature upgraded hardware and software including Custom Lenovo T61 PCs, 7965 IP Phones, 3560 Switches and Call Manager 7. With our flexible UC architecture, students are able to view and experience the full lab architecture regardless of which Cisco UC course they are taking or the skill set they are seeking. The lab architecture features a realistic network with redundant environments that are made rich with multiple machines, pre-deployed tools with shortcuts, online documentation that is particular to individual pods, and multiple OS support for all virtual machines (Windows, Linux, VMware).

This paper explains uplink strategies for traffic coming in and out of a Cisco Unified Computing Solution (UCS) chassis. An uplink can be Ethernet, Fibre Channel, or FCoE and is a physical connection on the FI that leaves the UCS domain directed away from the B Chassis.

The Cisco Unified Collaboration solutions offer anytime, anywhere access for organizations who need instant access to clients, vendors and remote employees. Cisco products enable authorized external users to connect to corporate resources, create different user groups and manage large scale deployments. Learn how Cisco Unified Collaboration infrastructure products can help you provide everything from call control which provides signaling and dial plan support to the expressway series providing firewall traversal for external access.

Cisco Unified Communication H.323 and SIP gateways will require a dial plan on those gateways to extend calls to endpoints that may be configured. An endpoint may be either an analog or digital voice port that would provide connections to the public switch telephone...

Cisco IP phones support a variety of different audio codecs. In this post, I will explain some of the differences and explain which versions of CUCM and the Cisco IP phones support the various audio codecs. Audio codecs are responsible for sampling human speech (a s...

Watch this recorded webinar to understand how Cisco Intent-Based Networks and SDN technologies will transform your network to be the cornerstone of your digital success.

The traditional network engineering model of configuring one device at a time simply doesn’t scale to the growing needs of today’s network. Cisco's intent-based networks and software-defined networking solutions 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.

Anyone who’s managed switches over the years knows that the Spanning-tree protocol (STP) is both the best and worst thing to ever happen to the data center at layer 2 of the OSI model. On the plus side, the Spanning-tree protocol is what first allowed us to create redundant paths within our switching infrastructure, making our data center much more resilient to outages than ever before. Anyone who’s experienced a “broadcast storm” knows the full value of Spanning-tree in the traditional switching environment. We’ve also seen many improvements in Spanning-tree over the years to make it work faster and more efficiently (i.e. Rapid Spanning-tree, Bridge Assurance, and many others).

CISSP remains one of the most respected and sought-after cybersecurity certifications. With the most recent update released in May 2021, (ISC)2 has maintained the high bar it set to validate the knowledge and skills of senior cybersecurity managers.

Many certification roadmaps include (ISC)2’s CISSP (Certified Information System Security Practitioner) as a crucial cybersecurity certification to consider in a career and education plan. One example is the CompTIA IT Certification Roadmap, which places CISSP in the “Expert” column of the Information Security pathway. The CompTIA roadmap of IT certifications is not alone in recognizing the importance and value of the CISSP.

The updated version of the CISSP exam was released on May 1, 2021. The new version now includes a significant number of new topics.

In this informative webinar recording, participants will learn about Global Knowledge's approach to blended learning, Blended Live, and explore the benefits of this challenge-based, flipped classroom model.

The change we have been talking about for years is here: IT Departments are being torn apart and reassembled in new and interesting ways, as one by one companies make their move to the Cloud. As predicted, IT Pros are being asked to take on new and different roles and to be more involved in the business. In this session, we will look at some of these new roles; what’s working, what’s failing, who is succeeding and who has been left behind. Being an IT professional today is exciting as it is scary. There is lots of opportunity; but so many gaps to fall into. It is time to take inventory and ask yourself: are you well positioned to succeed? Related: Ten IT Skills on the Brink of Extinction

Global Knowledge practice director for cloud solutions, Hank Marquis, explains the people, process, and technology aspects of cloud computing.

In this informative, hour-long webinar, Global Knowledge instructor Debbie Dahlin will explore an abundance of important cloud computing security issues. She will help you gain insight into the key cloud security issues of maintaining the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of corporate information and applications.

The definition of cloud computing depends largely on whether you are a consumer or producer. The public cloud is geared more for the individual consumer or small company, while the private cloud is geared more for a medium-to-large company. In addition, the private cloud is branching out to incorporate the ability to have some data and applications serviced from the public cloud. This white paper examines the different types of cloud computing and shows what cloud computing can offer you.

Cloud computing has risen from relative obscurity to the No. 1 tech area of interest in the world, according to the 2017 Global Knowledge IT Skills and Salary Report.

Get an insider’s take on 2017 cloud computing, DevOps, and Internet of Things (IoT) trends from an industry expert.

Cisco Collaboration Systems Release (CSR) 10.6, along with CUCM 10.5(2), enhances the user and administrator experiences and interactions. In many cases, a change to one product may necessitate changes to other products. For example, where the deployment options for video conference control changed to place all control behind the Telepresence Conductor, Cisco Prime Collaboration management tools had to be updated to reflect this new deployment approach. As new endpoints are added, CUCM and Prime Collaboration both needed to be updated to reflect the new endpoints.

PRINCE2® has a storied heritage spanning over 30 years, 200 countries, and is universally applicable to any industry or type of project, irrespective of size or complexity. Building on this robust foundation and industry-wide recognition, the PRINCE2® 7 method brings a renewed focus on the flexibility and adaptability required for today's fast-paced, digital-centric project environments.

Often, we don't have time to learn the reasons behind the standards we use. But learning what instigated a standard goes a long way toward not only understanding its importance, but also more easily and effectively applying it in your workplace. In this hour-long webinar, Global Knowledge instructor Keith Sorn will discuss common networking standards and explain how they were determined and why they are relevant. He will fill you in on things like why it's important to use proper color-coding standards when making cable and why the length limitations on wired cable are essential. He will also explain new standards, such as power over fiber.

Accelerating Leadership Development provides a proven model to develop high-potential employees to 1) assume critical roles, and 2) develop competencies, intellectual and knowledge capital. The book offers practical and rigorous tools and practices that enable organizations to identify and develop high-potential individuals, follow-up procedures to ensure activities are executed and results are captured; and leadership best practices to assure that leaders are functioning at a high level. The benchmarks of success are a pipeline of ready leaders, high-potential engagement and retention, and the development of intellectual capital.

For every IT professional, there comes a point when the realization hits: technical skill will only get you so far. You may have your foot in the door (or the IT cave), but in order to advance your career and set yourself apart, you need to bolster a critical soft skill: learning effective communication skills for IT professionals