IT Pro Tuesday #144

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Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!

Turns out lockdowns can be pretty good for business—if you're in the right business, that is. Check out this blog post about a recent survey among MSPs that researched the surprising effects of last year's restrictions on in-person work. You'll learn about the overall impact the shift to remote working had on MSPs and where those that experienced growth found opportunities among technologies and software.

This week, we're asking for your favorite tools we can share with the community... those that help you do your job better and more easily. Please reply or leave a comment with your suggestions, and we'll be featuring them in the coming weeks.

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 Free Tool

perfSONAR is an open-source network measurement toolkit that provides visibility to the nuances of your network to help with debugging. It offers federated coverage of paths and helps establish end-to-end usage expectations. jiannone appreciates that it "can do scheduled probes and statistics, along with iperf tests."

Training Resource

Pluralsight Skills offers thousands of courses, skill assessments and more on technology topics like software development, cloud, AI/ML, DevOps and security—and this month, the entire catalog is free. sergeant_salami suggests it's "perfect for trialing it out. I was an existing subscriber, but my subscription expired. I was able to use the link, and selected sign in rather than register... If you're a new subscriber, just click the link and sign up and be on your way. There is a lot of great content for AWS, Azure, ITIL, Server, etc. Hope it helps someone upskill."

Another Free Tool

Network UPS Tools provides support for assorted power devices, like UPSs and PSUs. It offers many control and monitoring features and a uniform control and management interface. Covers over 140 manufacturers and thousands of power device models. Appreciation for sharing this tool goes to cdoublejj.

Tutorials

CsPsProtocol offers a collection of simplified tutorials on core technology topics, including networking, programming, telecom, IoT and more. The helpful content is original and not available elsewhere. Kindly shared by cspsprotocoltech.

One More Free Tool

CherryTree is a hierarchical, wiki-style notetaking application for organizing your notes, bookmarks, source code and more. Features rich text, syntax highlighting and the ability to prioritize information. Uhaventlookedintoit tells us, "I love CherryTree. The node/subnode feature is great too.”

P.S. Bonus Free Tools

VSCodium is a repository of scripts that automatically build the Microsoft vscode repository into free-licensed binaries with a community-driven default configuration. aberu.gg explains, "It's just Visual Studio Code (which is open source), but with the telemetry/branding/licensing removed."

LibreSpeed is a configurable, lightweight self-hosted speed test for HTML5 and more. Supports PHP, Node, multiple servers and more. Features download, upload, ping, jitter, IP Address, ISP, distance from server, telemetry, results sharing and Multiple Points of Test. Our thanks for this one go to sryan2k1.

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