Resource Library

While the recent trend towards cloud computing might make it seem like virtualization is new, it has existed in some form for many decades.

This paper reviews many key issues and focuses attention on 10 responses that we all need to adopt in our approach to security.

Every manager wants to get the most out of every employee and maximize team cohesion and efficiency. Making your team members feel as if they are being heard, understood, and acknowledged is critical to any management strategy. Actively listening to team members’ thoughts, ideas, and challenges drives employee engagement and satisfaction, which drives better results. View the slide deck>>

Learn how to boost your visibility on LinkedIn by listing your skills and certifications and leveraging the courses you’ve taken for professional development. This is especially important to catch the eyes of recruiters and when applying for jobs.

Follow these four troubleshooting tips to help you work through a challenging repair and reach a solution without much wasted time and resources.

The 2021 revised and updated version CISSP (Certified Information System Security Practitioner) certification exam will be released on May 1, 2021. This new version of the popular CISSP exam will include a modest revision and re-organization of previously included topics, but will integrate a significant number of new topics.

It’s inevitable. At some point in your career, you’ll find yourself working alongside individuals who fall into the general category of “Difficult People.” The effects these people can have on an organization vary greatly but usually involve many problems for the team. This white paper describes some of the more common types of difficult people and provides you with tips on how to handle them.

Projects are often complex, made up of a large number of moving pieces. This brings numerous challenges. By using the three key steps mentioned in this white paper, your projects will run more smoothly from start to finish.

Critical thinking allows us to take control of our thinking rather than letting it become hijacked by convenience, mindset, assumptions and bias. This white paper will walk you through understanding the implications of inputs (data) and influences (bias) to the reasoning process. You will learn how to develop a questioning outlook and quality standards that will lead you to make more effective decisions.

What quality did the most influential leaders throughout history, such as Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher, all have in common? They were some of the greatest orators the world has ever known. Their communication skills were the tools with which they built up nations with strong foundations. They taught us that the most fundamental factor of success is without a doubt communication, and that strong communication is the pathway to strong leadership. Here you will find a breakdown of what makes an effective communicator and how you too can develop your leadership skills through communication.

As IT departments struggle with skills gaps and businesses attempt to recovery economically from the COVID-19 pandemic, these 10 IT skills are essential to drive success. Job roles in these areas pay well, but decision-makers are struggling to find qualified candidates. If you’re looking to make an IT skills investment or start a new career path this year, these are the areas to consider.

These technology job roles are proven to be essential during a crisis as enterprises scramble to change strategies and meet goals. The skills demonstrated by IT professionals in these 10 positions can make the difference between business success and failure, especially during a recession.

According to the Global Knowledge IT Skills and Salary Report, women make up 16% of the tech workforce, and an even smaller percentage (8%) are at the senior or executive level. Here’s an overview of the most popular and most pursued certifications by women in tech.

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>

VMware vSphere: ICM 6.7 is the foundation for most other VMware technologies in the software-defined data center. The recent update from 6.5 brings important new features and enhancements.

In the digital age, people and intellectual property have supplanted physical assets as the most important criteria for determining the value of an organization. It is the employees who develop the next big product or improve the practices, processes, services and internal culture that add significant value to an organization.

Take your VMware vSphere training to the next level—set up your own training lab environment. This paper is broken down into three major sections: the hardware required, the VMware Workstation configuration, and installing vSphere and vCenter (vC).

The profusion of email we receive every day is often blamed as our biggest productivity thief. Learn how Microsoft Outlook can help you manage not only your inbox, but your entire day. Watch this webinar and learn: Automating tasks Creating rules to manage your inbox Conditional Formatting Other tips and tricks to help you take control of your day Stop letting email manage your day and learn to take control with Microsoft Outlook. Take your first step and watch this webinar today! Outlook Training to Grow your Skills View our complete curriculum of 1-day hands-on Outlook courses on versions 2010, 2013 and 2016. Learn to benefit from all that Outlook can offer with our introductory and advanced level courses.

Whether you are operating a home system, overseeing a small startup, or performing security governance for an enterprise, everyone can benefit from paying attention to security. This white paper provides a list of 10 security tools and tests that will help you check out suspicious issues and keep ahead of new risks and threats.

The Global Knowledge IT Skills and Salary Report is a window into the inner workings of IT departments, revealing insights and opinions held by professionals around the world. For 10 years, we have surveyed over 120,000 men and women in IT about the state of the industry. With a decade of data at our fingertips, we analyzed 10 years’ worth of reports and noticed four major trending areas: certifications, salaries, cloud computing and cybersecurity. 

For 10 years, Global Knowledge has surveyed IT professionals and published the findings in our annual IT Skills and Salary Report. With topics ranging from top-paying certifications to most in-demand skills, our reports have consistently provided a deep examination of the attitudes and opinions held by IT professionals around the globe. With a decade of reporting at our fingertips, we decided it was an appropriate time to dissect the views of those making the decisions in the tech industry. What are their biggest challenges? How have their training opinions changed over time? How do their actions affect staff?

Virtualization is an umbrella term that continues to evolve to include many different types that are used in many different ways in production environments. Originally virtualization was done by writing software and firmware code for physical equipment so that the physical equipment could run multiple jobs at once. With the success of VMware and its virtualization of x86 hardware, the term virtualization has grown to include not just virtualizing servers, but whole new areas of IT. This article is going to look at the origins of virtualization and how some of the historical development has spurred on today's virtualization. In addition, we will discuss different types of virtualization that are being utilized in the marketplace today and a listing of some of the leading vendors.

This article addresses non-technical skills you need to do to be a success in IT.

General character attributes every IT pro should have and on the things that every IT pro should know or do.

There is a wide-range of services available in GCP ranging from Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to completely managed Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). In the first part of this series, we will discuss the available infrastructure components and how they provide a powerful and flexible foundation on which to build your applications.

In the future, IT leaders will face a host of multi-dimensional challenges as global business increases in technological complexity; some of the challenges include harnessing mobilization and use of social media for business, developing employee- and customer-facing business applications.

This article defines many of the most commonly used terms in the virtualization vocabulary.

When designing a structured business analyst interview, it’s crucial to have a goal in mind, a clear set of questions planned, and an understanding of how those questions may deviate from the intended goal. An interview has an intended line of questioning; it may also have alternate lines of questioning and unanticipated paths where the interviewee has raised issues or answered questions in a way the business analyst had not considered or planned. In short, an interview is a social process.

A structured business analysis interview is much more than a conversation; it is a controlled event requiring attention to detail, cautious design, and a strong social foundation from which to build a trusting and lasting relationship.

Linking business analysis skills with the methods of The Open Group’s Architecture Framework, TOGAF®, facilitates stronger IT results that drive business value.

Structuring techniques are the foundation of decision making. They are to decision making what blueprints are to construction. There are a number of techniques that will quickly and easily improve the analysis of virtually any problem. This paper introduces some of the simplest and most effective structuring techniques including sorting, sequencing, placement, decision trees, and ranking.  

When a decision matters, there are certain steps you will want to follow. In this white paper, we provide guidelines for approaching decisions. The steps in this white paper are a series of interconnected techniques used in problem analysis and decision making.

VMware announced Horizon 7 in February and subsequently released the software updates. Horizon 7 provides a more streamlined, high-performance virtual desktop and application experience. New updates include features such as Instant Clones, Smart Policies, Blast Extreme and greater scalability with Cloud Pod Architecture. Let’s dig into the seven key features that Horizon 7 brings!

Leadership is evolving beyond traditional leadership skills, and it has never been so important. In an era of constant change, digital disruption, increased employee expectations and rising business complexity, today’s leaders require more than the fundamentals.  In years past, leadership development focused on helping leaders set performance expectations, communicate effectively, provide feedback, coach and motivate their employees. While these skills remain important, they are no longer sufficient to meet the business requirements of the 21st century. Leaders now require skills and competencies to ensure that they also build highly productive teams, accelerate organizational results and transform customer experiences in a fast-paced, highly competitive and global working environment. In this hour-long webinar, leadership consultant Kim Caughlin will reveal and discuss the new high-demand skills and competencies required to lead effectively in the 21st century. 

The Toronto Chapter of the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP), in partnership with Global Knowledge, welcomes Kelly Norgate to share information about her success in leading change with powerful change communication strategies. In this hour-long webinar, Norgate will examine the link between creative change communication solutions and great corporate culture. You will learn practical change communications strategies and tactics that generate the energy and commitment required to get employees on board with transformational change. Take your next change communication plan from good – to great.

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.

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.

If you're responsible for creating marketing content and the demand for fresh content is stressing you out, help has arrived. In this hour-long webinar, award-winning content creator Gail Mercer-MacKay will show you how to easily create new content that will attract prospects even if you're short on time and budget. You will learn how basic building blocks, such as blogs, social media and newsletters, support each other and can be reused multiple times. By producing fresh content, leveraging the content of others and broadcasting through various mechanisms to drive awareness, followers, likes and leads, you can obtain your desired results by investing only seven to 10 hours a month.

Often we let personal biases and other intuitive mental forces push us towards quick decisions. In contrast, good decision makers make the effort to really analyze issues. Instead learn how to become a critical thinker by separating facts from assumptions to make consistent, high-quality decisions.

Every business needs to have a consultative approach that increases organizational buy-in, enhances client relationships and improves customer service. Applying consulting skills can mean greater success for individuals and organizations alike. In this one-hour webinar, Michelle Moore will provide an overview of the Consulting Skills Lifecycle and present practical ideas from our McMaster Certified Consulting Skills Program. You'll learn how to engage your clients, gather and analyze information, present findings and recommendations, plan and implement recommendations and conclude the engagement and evaluate results.

In this world of volatility and complexity, it seems that the only certainty is the unstoppable advancement of technology. As people and organizations look to improve productivity, innovate their business models and processes, and differentiate their client and employee experiences, they need to be prepared to work in new and different ways. The challenge is that recent data reveals that Canada is falling behind the rest of the world in innovation, especially regarding new and disruptive technologies that promise to significantly impact every industry and organizations of all types and sizes. In this 60-minute webinar, we will explore the concept of digital disruption and provide information about how to future-proof yourself and your organization to succeed in this new world.

In this paper, we explore the basic usage of PowerShell in the pursuit of automating the management of Hyper-V deployments. This paper is targeted to IT professionals who have been "GUI-bound" to their management interfaces and have been working with or are embarking on the journey of Hyper-V administration. We'll explore the usage of Hyper-V specific cmdlets with the intent of ultimately being able to include multiple cmdlets in a "script" to allow for pushing one button and accomplishing the combined actions of many multiple mouse clicks in the GUI. No more repetitive tasks!

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.

When we learn a concept for the first time, the newness of it tends to become embedded with the learning process. We remember the new idea's significance and forever after remember it as new. The initial impact of a discovery can prevent the concept from aging. At the same time, we realize how quickly technology advances. Is it time to evolve your expertise?

Change managers and project managers come at the same goal of maximizing ROI for their organizations, but from different perspectives and approaches and with different skill sets. While project managers are responsible for achieving specific objectives on time and on budget, the change manager's role is broader. Change managers apply a structured approach to helping individuals, teams and organizations negotiate relentless change. A project manager turns ideas into reality. Increasingly, project managers are required to take on the role of change manager as well. Business today can't afford to carry out tasks without considering the larger picture. Today, integration is unavoidable - and expected. In this hour-long interactive session, we'll discuss the similarities and differences between project management and change management. We'll also identify the occasions when both a project manager and a change manager might be needed.

One of the most significant new features in Microsoft Windows Server 2012 is the Hyper-V Replica (HVR) capability. Whether you are considering this for your own organization or just prepping for your Windows Server 2012 MCSA, this white paper presents the essentials of deploying this disaster recovery feature.

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.

Technology in the digital age is disrupting everything in our lives and our workplace -- and it's impacting all aspects of the "People, Process and Technology" paradigm. Changes for IT professionals, project managers and business analysts are profound and are happening at lightning speed - faster than we've ever seen before. Individuals and organizations must keep pace or get left behind. Never fear. Along with the danger of quickly finding yourself on the sidelines are opportunities for tremendous career growth. Join us for this one-hour session on career management in the digital age. You will learn about the forces that are impacting business, how skills are evolving, which new skills will emerge and what you can do to adapt and succeed in the digital age.

You will learn how many organizations approach change management as compared to how best practices dictate that change management should work. Global Knowledge instructor and ITIL Expert Michael Scarborough will fill you in on the purpose of change management and the difference between change management and change tickets. He will provide a high-level guide for establishing a change management process that uses real-world examples as its basis.

Communication in our work and personal life has been dramatically transformed, not only by technology, but also by new practices and habits. At the same time, numerous studies show that communication is one of the top critical skills required to be successful. In fact, because of the way organizations and jobs are evolving, the importance of communication keeps increasing for professionals and leaders. This hour-long complimentary webinar is not about how to maximize your LinkedIn contacts or attract more Twitter followers. Jocelyn Bérard is a psychologist specializing in human performance and will share innovative ways to influence others through communication. He will also help you raise your knowledge and awareness about your personality traits and personal characteristics, how they impact communication and how to use them effectively.The digital age is here and you can't control it. But you can certainly improve and better use the human side of your communication.

Today's organizations must integrate and align people, processes, structures, culture and strategy to successfully transition individuals and/or groups from a current state to a future state to achieve their desired business outcomes and objectives. It is how we define change management today, which directly affects everyone from the entry-level employee to senior management. Everyone must learn how to make organizational changes, where managers are charged with the additional responsibility of making these changes happen in and through the different levels of strategic execution. This one-hour webinar focuses on change management in the areas of organizational development and human resource management combined with standardized portfolio, program, and project management practices (i.e., A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge-Fifth Edition (PMBOK® Guide)).

The Logical Volume Manager (LVM) is a powerful tool for managing storage on Linux servers. This video provides an overview of how LVM works and explores several ways that LVM makes storage management easier and more flexible. Examples include how to expand storage capacity on the fly using LVM and resize2fs, and how to migrate data from local storage to a storage area network (SAN) without downtime using pvmove.

This power session is an introduction to Managing Stakeholder relations. It offers new ways of managing and dealing with projects, which focus more on communications, understanding stakeholders' needs and managing their expectations, as well as learning about organizational politics and culture, and performing value-add activities. It provides a practical approach to managing issues that matter most for project success - communication, stakeholder expectations, risk, change and quality; so that the scope, schedule and cost end up on target, achieving the desired outcomes for the organization.

Problem Solving - Root Cause Analysis using Kepner Tregoe

Many people believe that cloud computing requires server (or desktop) virtualization. But does it? We will look at using virtualization without cloud computing, cloud computing without virtualization, and then look at using both together. In each case, we'll look at where each deployment might be most useful, some use cases for it and some limitations.

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.

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.

A shift is occurring in the way we view leadership today. If you want to get things done, you need influence, not authority. This means that IT Professionals, Project Managers, Business Analysts, business-line Managers and individual contributors must focus on demonstrating personal leadership. Getting results through others by building relationships and using influence skills rather than relying on positional power is key.

Global Knowledge Senior Business Skills instructor Samuel Brown covers tips for preparing and practicing for the PMP exam.

In this report, I've reviewed the 15 most popular certifications according to our more than 12,000 North American respondents to our annual IT Skills and Salary Survey. For each certification, you'll find a brief description, the average salary, and some insight into why it is popular.

Organizations are moving strongly toward Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) access, bringing outsourced activities back in-house, and finding ways to make use of the growing amounts of data flowing in from many new sources such as social media. These factors create an increasing shift in required and desired skills showing up in IT departments. Hiring and salary surveys, such as the 2014 IT Skills and Salary Survey from Global Knowledge and Windows IP Pro, TEKsystems' 2014 Annual IT Forecast, Foote Research Group's 2014 IT Skills and Certifications Pay Index, Computerworld's annual Forecast survey, Robert Half Technology Survey, and information from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Futurestep, Mondo, GovLoop, and Dice have presented a developing picture of the IT skills that will be in demand in 2014. Here, in survey order, are the top 10 major skills and why they made the list.

Global Knowledge Senior Business Skills instructor Samuel Brown covers tips for preparing and practicing for the PMP exam.

Business is changing rapidly and Information Technology is at the centre of the trends: mobile, social, cloud and big data,. Forward thinking IT functions must develop and manage the skills of their most critical asset-- their employees. Effective professional development can guard against the pace of change, leading IT units to re-define job roles to include both technical and non-technical competencies and to establish business processes to help their staff develop and maintain these skills. This session will present the components of a holistic process to support learning and development in any IT organization.

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.

How can leaders and Human Resources professionals use effective, simple and research-based talent management practices to contribute to their organization's success? Too many leadership development theories provide complex and confusing answers. Join Jocelyn Bérard as he shares the core practices introduced in his new book, Accelerating Leadership Development, which reflects his extensive research and years of experience in making leadership development uncomplicated and practical.

VMware vCloud Director fashions the provisioning of the software-defined datacenter layer to allow for a full virtual datacenter deployment within a short period of time. A vCloud consists of many layers and can quickly become a complex architecture. Before any deployment, requirements should be defined so that the vCloud can be designed to offer those services needed. It is imperative to understand the many components of vCloud, how each vCloud construct fits, which allocation models are available, and what network options can be chosen.

Business complexity, technology innovation and a new understanding of how we learn at work are causing the learning profession to re-think how they develop and sustain human performance and behaviour change. As a result new methods and approaches are emerging that promise to change the landscape of learning and development meeting in the coming years. This session will provide an opportunity to learn about the following trends and their application.

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.

The utility that many senior VMware administrators rely on to address performance and troubleshooting issues is the built-in utility called ESXTOP. The tool has been built in to the hypervisor, and can be used in both ESXi and the old ESX host. The first tool many VMware Administrators rely upon is esxtop, to check real-time performance on an ESXi host using a command-line tool such as ssh to start the esxtop CLI utility. This paper will introduce and demonstrate how to start and use esxtop, specifically looking at the CPU fields. In addition, we will cover information that can be used to help with performance issues of the CPU. The esxtop utility is an excellent tool to use when you want to observe an individual ESXi host's performance.

Resource Pools are often misunderstood, disliked, and untrusted by vSphere Administrators. However, resource pools can be very useful tools for administrators who want to configure resource management without having to individually configure each VM. This leads to the administrator’s desire to explore the proper usage of resource pools.

This white paper has three main goals. The first is to generate a better understanding of the cloud in both the business and IT communities. The second is to describe the major components of vCloud and the virtual datacenters they provide. The third is help businesses visualize and understand how vClouds could be beneficial in addressing their specific IT needs.

This vSphere Essentials white paper will give you a basic understanding of some of the concerns or planning points to consider as you get ready to deploy vSphere in your organization. This is a glimpse into some of the essential things to consider for implementing vSphere. This will focus on some of the basics that vSphere administrators run into when installing the latest features and not realizing they still have some older versions implemented.

If you are upgrading to ESXi 5.1, there are some important facts that you should consider first. Upgrading involves many stages and processes that must be performed in a specific order. Many of these processes are one-way and do not provide a "back button." If you do not use care and consideration in your upgrade plan, you could possibly lose important data and configuration; and potentially even lose contact with your servers.

Self-awareness is a very powerful tool for leaders in every type of business or organization. The more leaders can maximize their self awareness the greater the impact on business performance, employee engagement and leadership and development initiatives. Self-awareness is the central component of personal development and emotional intelligence. For most leaders today it is still underdeveloped and frequently underemployed. Better understanding of this important leadership trait is critical for leadership and organizational success.

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.

XenApp 6.5 brings a host of features and benefits that most companies will need as the technology continues to evolve and user requirements continue to expand.

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.

Examine fifteen common myths surrounding virtualization, including many that prevent IT administrators (or their bosses) from getting the maximum value from virtualization. This paper is designed to be vendor-neutral; in other words, the basic concepts and advantages are the same whether you choose to use Citrix XenServer, VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, or one of the many Linux-based solutions. We'll break the reasons into three broad categories (Cost/ROI, Performance, and Other), allowing you to focus in on a specific area if desired, or you can review the entire white paper for a broader view.

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.

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