Resource Library

While there are differences between the IP Multicast configuration in the IOS and the Nexus OS, the Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) protocol remains fundamentally the same. If you feel comfortable configuring Multicast in the IOS, you should be able to acclimate fairly easily to the changes in the Nexus OS.

This e-book details the six steps along the learner’s journey. People are the heart of any organization and success can only be achieved when you develop the people who orchestrate technology and business processes. Learn how to identify and close skills gaps, select a training provider, evaluate success, and more.

Through the use of automation, compliance, self-service portal, and standardization, Microsoft's System Center Service Manager can support the best practices found in the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) and the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF). Service Manager also has built-in processes for Incident and Problem management, Change and Configuration management as well as Asset Lifecycle Management.

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit is an free inventory, assessment, and reporting tool from that helps you assess your current IT infrastructure and determine the right Microsoft technologies for your IT needs.

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!

Unified asset and service management software provides a common control center for managing business processes for both digital and physical assets. SmartCloud Control Desk is an Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®)-compliant software that is accessible through mobile devices and integrates with social media and development tools. Discover how to choose the delivery model you need such as on-premise, software as a service (SaaS), or VM image and seamlessly change it to suit your business needs.

Cloud forensics involves exploring issues a company and its forensic examiner may face when suffering a breach of company information in the cloud. If they need to collect information from the cloud to determine what happened, to determine what was lost or compromised, for remediation, for civil litigation, or for some other action, what issues will they face? And, how can they collect the data? Although this white paper discusses many legal issues, this is not a legal "how-to" article. The purpose is to provide some insight into cloud forensics.

Learning how to program and develop for the Hadoop platform can lead to lucrative new career opportunities in Big Data. But like the problems it solves, the Hadoop framework can be quite complex and challenging. Join Global Knowledge instructor and Technology Consultant Rich Morrow as he leads you through some of the hurdles and pitfalls students encounter on the Hadoop learning path. Building a strong foundation, leveraging online resources, and focusing on the basics with professional training can help neophytes across the Hadoop finish line.

Gain access to this hands-on lab and learn to use NMAP, an open-source port-scan tool, for networking discovery, vulnerability scanning and security risk detection.

Using ITIL can improve your IT service levels, customer service ratings, business productivity and reduce operating costs, but getting started can be overwhelming. Gain the understanding you need to adopt and adapt ITIL with instructions and tips for important steps such as internal employee communications, determining potential pain points and methods for evaluating your existing processes.

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is gaining momentum along with Software-Defined Networking (SDN). This paper examines the history of NFV and explores the prospects for networking to gradually evolve from a hardware-centric approach to a software-driven model. It concludes with an examination of future market implications and how NFV can help organizations to achieve their goals.

The first big push toward implementation of IPv6 was mobile devices. Now, one of the driving forces is the Internet of Things. As the name implies, this means everything, including machine to machine communication (M2M).

As with the adoption of any new technology, the move from IP version 4 to IP version 6 will take a number of years to complete. During that transition phase, various mechanisms will be necessary to continue support of the older protocol as the newer gains widespread momentum. In addition, there has been some evolution even within the availability of these mechanisms, some of which have already passed from general use into deprecated status. Network engineering professionals already proficient in the use of IPv6, as well as the available coexistence mechanisms, will undoubtedly stay in high demand throughout this process.

In 1998, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) released RFC 2460, outlining the technical specifications of IPv6, which addressed the shortcomings of the aging IPv4 protocol. As with any evolution of technology, new elements exist in the protocol that may seem strange and unfamiliar. This certainly includes address representation, space, and so forth, but also includes a number of different types of addresses as well. A subset of these new addressing types has corresponding types in IPv4, but many will seem significantly different. The purpose of this white paper is to examine addressing classifications in detail and outline their functions within the context of the protocol.

Negotiation is a dialogue intended to resolve disputes, to produce an agreement on courses of action, to bargain for individual or collective advantage, or to craft outcomes to satisfy various interests. It is the primary method of alternative dispute resolution. This white paper focuses primarily on the negotiation process, different negotiation styles, and the various elements of communication that affect the outcome, including: Negotiation Communications, Constructive Questioning, Communication Obstacles (and overcoming those obstacles), Challenging Negotiation Situations and "Traps," and, finally, completing Successful Negotiations, a.k.a. "Getting to Yes"

Database Management Systems (DBMS) have been monolithic structures with their own dedicated hardware, storage arrays, and consoles. Amazon Web Services (AWS) realized that while each company can use unique methods of collecting and using data, the actual processes of building the management infrastructure are almost always the same. AWS remedies DBMS problems with its Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS).

AWS has introduced Auto Scaling so that you can take advantage of cloud computing without having to incur the costs of adding more personnel or building your own software. You can use Auto Scaling to scale for high availability, to meet increasing system demand, or to control costs by eliminating unneeded capacity. You can also use Auto Scaling to quickly deploy software for massive systems, using testable, scriptable processes to minimize risk and cost of deployment.

Discover how the enhanced performance and reliability of Amazon Aurora will help AWS customers reduce performance bottlenecks in their applications. The relatively low cost of Aurora will tempt many customers to migrate workloads to this implementation of RDS.

Effective requirements collection at the outset of the project is the key step that will ensure that the project manager can deliver what is actually expected. In this respect, the business analyst must become a key ally and advisor to the project manager. Most project managers are not trained business analysts, so taking advantage of the skill set that a business analyst can offer can greatly enhance the possibility of project success.

Cisco provides a wide array of connectivity and isolation tools within the datacenter. This white paper addresses Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF), which is a Layer 3 isolation mechanism for routing protocols.

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.

Times are changing. Attacks are becoming much more sophisticated and hackers are exploiting human vulnerabilities to gain access to enterprise networks and private information. Employees and end users want to help protect your company's sensitive data, we just need to motivate them as to why they should care. By educating your employees on security best practices and current human vulnerabilities, you can take a step forward to ensuring you're not a part of the many organizations that are breached.

In the face of increasing skills gaps and the demands that digital transformation is placing on organizations, skilled IT works are a must. This white paper explains how Global Knowledge can help your organization build a more engaged, highly skilled workforce through IT training. It presents the findings of recent surveys, completed by more than 3,200 Global Knowledge students that have attended training within the past eight months. Learn the top benefits that organizations receive from training their employees, the expected productivity gain and much more

Managing users' access to an organization's resources via portals is convenient with IBM's WebSphere Portal Scripting Interface. Compare tools available to the portal administrator and identify some use cases where IBM's Portal Scripting Interface may be the ideal choice. Review basic commands and find out how to create custom scripts.

SOA is all about architecture-after all, it's right there in the acronym-yet most organizations think it is about turning existing software components into web services. When you adopt SOA, remember that it is all about design and governing that design. It's about how you design your service interfaces, your services, your data model, and your business processes. It's about how you keep track of your services, how you control the design, definition, deployment, and distribution of your services and their artifacts, how you define a service contract and service level agreement for your service consumers, how to secure your services, and how to react when things go wrong with them.

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.

In any operational data center, it is critical to have the highest degree of visibility on network traffic for operations and application troubleshooting.

Measurements and metrics provide a view into every aspect of an organization. From resource availability to necessary improvements, measurements are the key to successfully understanding how your organization is performing. This paper will give you guidance on why measuring is important, how to get started, what types of metrics are available, what should be measured, and how to go about initiating improvements.

In any operational data network, the two high-level outcome possibilities are connectivity and isolation. If every device can connect to every other device by enabling full connectivity, networking is relatively easy to create, but inherently unsecure. If a network fully isolates all forms of traffic, it is unusable.

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.

Good global project managers develop their own competencies, and those of their team members. We can use technology to bridge distance, but also focus on the human aspects of culture, work habits, management style, English as a mandated language, communication, and uncertainty. Perform a self-assessment and assess your team members, then look for on-the-job and other improvement opportunities. A good way to learn more about how to overcome these challenges is to become involved in the international community.

This Certification Prep Guide provides an overview of the current Multicloud Infrastructure certification offered by Nutanix and offers helpful tips that you can use when preparing for your certification exam

ITIL is the preeminent framework for managing IT service delivery around the world. ITIL 4 defines a Service Value System that prescribes specific practices and activities during the design, development, delivery, and support of IT services.

CISA is now one of the most sought-after and highest-paying IT certifications

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.

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).

As far as modern architectures go, there are few more complicated than an IoT pipeline. You’ve got to consider an ingestion layer (typically streaming) that may undergo manic load. You’ve got to think of data tagging, storage (probably across multiple engines), archival and access—both internal and external. And all of it has to scale like crazy, be as cost effective as possible, and use automation wherever it can. Oh, and your boss needs the IoT pipeline built by tomorrow. Short timelines? Tight budget? Unrealistic expectations? Unfortunately, these asks are realities for many cloud professionals. AWS knows this and is here to help.  

Digital transformation has bred equal parts innovation and risk. And it’s not just the IT department that’s been disrupted—technology is now the most critical risk factor for the entire organization.

This Certification Prep Guide provides an overview of the Microsoft Azure Fundamentals certification and offers helpful tips that you can use when preparing for your certification exam. 

This Certification Prep Guide provides an overview of the Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification and offers helpful tips that you can use when preparing for your certification exam.

This Certification Prep Guide provides an overview of the Microsoft Azure Developer Associate certification and offers helpful tips that you can use when preparing for your certification exam.

This Certification Prep Guide provides an overview of the Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate certification and offers helpful tips that you can use when preparing for your certification exam.

CISSP is a widely desired indicator of knowledge, experience, and excellence on the resume of many IT professionals.

This certification prep guide provides an overview of the current Cisco Certified Network Professional-Security certification and offers helpful tips.

The CCNP Enterprise certification is the newest CCNP level certification. It replaces the CCNP Routing and Switching certification that has had multiple iterations throughout the years.

This certification prep guide provides an overview of the current Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification and offers helpful tips that students can use when preparing for the exam.

The Cisco Certified CyberOps Associate certification focuses on the cybersecurity branch of IT security

This paper is a high level, moderately technical understanding of Hyper-Converged Infrastructures. IT managers, data center architects, and administrators alike may find this information helpful in their pursuit to simplify the data center and improve application performance.

With VMware's recent release of the Horizon Suite (specifically View 6), VMware has taken the performance and usability features and put them all under the Blast moniker. This category of features is grouped from a marketing perspective but will retain their technical terms in the documentation, similar to how the term vSphere encompasses both ESXi and vCenter. Learn about the various features of the components that comprise the Blast family, including a brief discussion of what they are, improvements in version 6, and any notes or requirements for implementation.

Discover why healthcare organizations must take an immediate active role in securing their data. It is much more costly, monetarily as well as with regard to reputation, for an organization to react to a breach rather than plan for it.

Creativity is the “due diligence” of effective problem analysis. It is through creativity that the best possible solution for a problem is discovered. Without creativity, decisions are often one-dimensional, superficial, and near-sighted.

Cisco Unified Computing Solution (UCS) is a very popular and powerful solution. Cisco continues to provide updated UCS management options for the full range of data center installations.

This certification and exam guide discusses the various ITIL® certifications and what they might mean to you, your organization, and your career, as well as provide important test-taking tips for the ITIL certification exams. ITIL certifications help individuals validate their ability to demonstrate skills from a foundational to a mastery level of IT service management. ITIL certification can often be a key differentiator in the marketplace as well.

IBM Tivoli Endpoint Manager (ITEM) is a product designed to let enterprises automatically manage computers, allowing thousands of them to be managed by just a few support staff. With ITEM, tasks such as patch application, software distribution, and security policy enforcement can be performed on all of an organization's computers with minimal supervision.

PowerShell is the perfect tool for capturing the best practices that your IT staff already implements manually, and transforms that with scripting. It provides the ability to cross-reference information from a variety of different sources, and apply custom solutions that marshal your unique resources to solve the problems you face. The tool is easy to learn, included for free with all your Windows OSs, and provides enormously rich possibilities to grow skills over time.

5,700+ of your peers completed the survey. Gain access to Skillsoft’s IT Skills and Salary Report to see the results.

Securing corporate information can be a challenge, considering the numerous technologies and platforms that need to be protected. One technology that definitely helps achieve secure data is public key infrastructure (PKI), which enhances the security of data by using advanced access methods and making sure the authenticity of the data flow is preserved.

The OSI model is a conceptual tool used to discuss and describe network functions. The use of a standard reference model is essential to communicate ideas as well as create new technologies. It is a good idea to be familiar with the OSI model, the features assigned to each layer, and examples of common protocols or technologies associated with the OSI layers.

A local area network (LAN) provides a path of communication, allowing the delivery of packets of data, voice, or video originating from the sender (logical source address) to the receiver (logical destination address). Ethernet is the most common LAN used. As you start to learn about networking, remember that communication and the movement of large numbers, whether it is people, cars, mail, or network traffic, have a commonality. Everything you know and use in your daily life can be compared to the way traffic moves.

Discover how Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) will revolutionize IT and change the way you think about network connectivity and perhaps even application development. This white paper is written for networking professionals but it may offer valuable insight for those in cross-functional roles such as DevOps, server virtualization, and data center management.

Unless you know the meanings of the five symbols regularly used in PowerShell, they can obscure the purpose and actions of a PowerShell script. There will always be new cmdlets to decipher. Each new operating system release and application version will include new and useful cmdlets along with new parameters for existing cmdlets. You can't memorize them all, but with the basic knowledge of these particular symbols, you should be well equipped to follow the logic of many scripts.

Mobile payment systems have solid promise to become the dominant means of financial transactions, but there are some hurdles to overcome. Apple Pay might be the dominant force today, but Google Wallet and others are not far behind. The year 2014 was when digital and mobile payment systems became known to a wide range of the general population, while only techno-enthusiasts were aware of the options in the four to five years prior. Thus, mobile payment systems are not new, but customers and merchants are quickly adopting them now that they have become popular. It still remains your responsibility to thoroughly research any mobile payment option before implementing it. It is your money and you have the burden of ensuring that it has the best protection possible.

These five "secrets" to virtualizing desktops will greatly increase the chance of a successfully VDI implementation. It is very important to plan for this; to balance the hardware environment to handle not just average but peak load; to properly size storage, not just for capacity, but for performance as well; to minimize the number of base images so that the costs of maintaining each can also be minimized; and to accept and embrace the fact that people will connect with a wide variety of devices, and to create a plan to accommodate as many of these devices as is feasible at the lowest cost.

Here are some secrets, tips, and tricks for virtualizing your datacenter. We want to introduce some best practices for virtualization, while not being too biased towards one virtualization vendor or another. We'll use some common examples of products and tools that work with VMware's vSphere and Microsoft's Hyper-V, but with an eye toward virtualization in general, and not the specifics of any of the capable platforms that could be used). We will assume, however, that bare metal hypervisors, in other words virtualization platforms where the hyper visor is the OS, will be used as opposed to running a hypervisor on top of an existing general-purpose operating system (which is great in a lab, but terrible for data center projects).

Virtual storage area network (VSAN) and VMware View can offer cost savings and performance benefits compared to traditional SAN implementations for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). If you are starting a new desktop virtualization project, it would be wise for you to take the time to explore your options and compare VSAN to other options.

Discover the ways in which VMware's new vSphere 6.0 is more powerful, more manageable, more secure, and more flexible than any previous release of vSphere.

Advancing your knowledge of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud can be life-changing.

By using and implementing a many-to-many relationship in a cube, existing tables with user account information can be used directly to secure cube contents, rather than converting to role based security in the cube. You can also secure your analysis services more easily and access sensitive information contained within it.

This white paper addresses four different components of the Tivoli monitoring infrastructure for creating a high availability environment while providing redundancy and failover capacity. Although the principles are the same for each of these systems, the methods for adhering to these principles are different for each of them.

A Dynamic Multipoint Virtual Private Network (DMVPN) can be used with other networks like Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), but streaming multicast is accomplished quite well using "Default" and "Data" Multicast Distribution Trees (MDTs) with MPLS.

Building upon the IT best practices of Lean, Agile Scrum and IT Service Management, DevOps adds that “missing” layer to tie together the service lifecycle workflow across Development and Operations, while leveraging the latest in automation technology. Demand for skilled, open-minded, and collaborative professionals with DevOps knowledge is rapidly increasing. Are you ready for change?    

In numerous Cisco classes, students learn about IPv4 and IPv6 address subnetting, complex subnetting, variable length subnet masking (VLSM), summarization, prefix routing, and address aggregation. These are valuable skills. In order to apply these skills efficiently, a network designer should possess one additional skill. Planning the IP address space for a Class A or B IPv4 address is necessary to apply the complex skills listed above properly. Complex subnetting, VLSM, and IP address summarization can be implemented simply and efficiently with proper planning.

IBM WebSphere Business Modeler (WBM) can be used in conjunction with an adoption of ITIL best practices. It is a full-featured process modeling and simulation tool that fits well with other IBM products that are used to define various service management processes and activities. In this white paper learn more about how WBM provides both the ability to visually define process activities and the ability to define detailed information about processes, including inputs, outputs, cost, revenue, roles and resources.

Experts agree that as long as there is data, there will be people trying to steal it. For every defense mechanism put in place, there is someone who will find a way to get around it. Constant vigilance, education of the workforce, and management support are all necessary to implement effective security policies. While a well-trained IT staff is key to protecting data, all employees must understand the importance of protecting company assets, including data.

This cybersecurity white paper explores the origins and motivations of cyberwarfare, and provides actions you can take in response.

Discover the ways in which cybercrime occurs in three realms: individual, business, and governmental. Learn what you can do to protect yourself and your organization.

In the spring of 2013, Cisco announced major updates to their Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) curricula, including a new version of the CCNA Routing and Switching exam (200-120 CCNA). This paper provides a review of the CCNA Routing and Switching exam's critical concepts, as an aid to students preparing to pass the latest version of the CCNA Routing and Switching exam.

This paper covers the configuration of IP Multicast with Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) including the basics of Multicast with the Group Encrypted Transport VPN (GETVPN).

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) can become a fairly complex environment and deployment, as it involves multiple components that all need to work together smoothly. Understanding the theory of how it all works will help in building a solid foundation for this complex technology in your organization. Although there is always something new to learn in PKI, this white paper gives you a great overview of the core configuration of your Microsoft CAs.

If you have been working with vSphere 5.1 or 5.5 lately, you have undoubtedly noticed that the latest features such as XvMotion and vSphere Replication are only available on the Web Client. This cheat sheet for the new Web Client includes instructions for configuring VMs, networking, storage, resource settings, cluster settings, permissions, and many other settings.