IT Pro Tuesday #119

Get this in your inbox each week.

Hello IT Pro,

Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!

We’re looking for your favorite tech websites to share with the community. Please let us know those that help you do things more easily so you get better at your job!

As always, we’re updating the full, searchable list on our website here. Enjoy.

But on with this week's tools...! Here are the most-interesting items that have come across our desks, laptops and phones this week. Hornetsecurity has no known affiliation with any of these unless we explicitly state otherwise.

A Blog

VMware Blog is where Kevin Soltow—a storage consultant specialized in VMware technologies and keen on storage virtualization—shares his experience, tips and hints on various virtualization technologies. Soltow graduated from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich with deep knowledge in software engineering, and he currently works on implementing disaster recovery and virtual SAN solutions.

A Service

CertAlert is a simple, straightforward service that will alert you about impending TLS/SSL certificate expirations. Simply enter your domain and an address for receiving alerts to set up monitoring so you can be sure you never miss another renewal date. Appreciation for this one goes to nz_kereru.

A Free Tool

Nextcloud is a user-friendly, on-premises content collaboration platform. Combines the convenience and ease of use of consumer-grade solutions like Dropbox and Google Drive with business-grade security, privacy and control. Features brute force protection; advanced server-side and integrated, end-to-end client-side encryption; enterprise-grade key handling and a wide range of security hardenings. SgtKashim describes it as a "reasonable file sharing and storage system, with modules for a bunch of extra tools. Most free, but not all. Integrates wtih OnlyOffice, so you can have your fileshare through NextCloud and edit the documents live "on the cloud."

A Tip

networkwiresonfire shares a keyboard shortcut for times when you're using "web-applications where you can't click stuff without anything happening":

  • Press ALT while marking text (so you don't click a button or drag a link)
  • ctrl+shift+v sometimes also works

 

A Book

Windows Server 2016 Unleashed is your guide to planning, design, prototyping, implementation, migration, administration and support—including coverage of key innovations from the cloud, containers, security and mobility. Fully addresses all aspects of deploying and operating Windows Server 2016, including Active Directory, networking, application services, security, administration, business continuity, virtualization, optimization and troubleshooting as well as new features like Storage Spaces Direct, Cluster-Aware Updating, Dynamic Access Control and Nano Server. For Windows pros at all levels—with tips, tricks, best practices and lessons learned from actual deployments.

 

P.S. Bonus Free Tools

K-Lite is a comprehensive codec pack for playing popular (and some not-so-popular) audio and video files. A user-friendly collection of all the DirectShow filters, VFW/ACM codecs and tools you’ll need for encoding and decoding the common audio and video formats in use today. Hats off to K0media for suggesting this one!

Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition provides you with powerful backup, recovery and replication capabilities for VMware and Hyper-V, as well as physical servers, workstations, laptops and cloud instances. Back up to VTLs, tape libraries and standalone tape drives;  centrally manage and deploy Veeam Agents for Windows and Linux; protect and restore entire desktops, laptops and individual guest files; perform file-level recovery from a snapshot and more. coffey64 adds that it "comes with 10 licenses for free. One of the best (if not the best) backup solutions out there."

 

Have a fantastic week and as usual, let us know any comments.

IT Pro title: 
VMware Blog, Cert Alerts, Content Platform & More