IT Pro Tuesday #213

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Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!

First off this week, we'd like to invite you to take part in a 5-min survey on ransomware. Help us understand how these security threats are affecting your organization, and you'll get a chance to win a 32” 4K Samsung Monitor worth $349.

We're looking for your favorite tips and 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 list on our website here. Enjoy.

A Tutorial

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Optical Networking is an updated version of the popular tutorial that explains how fiber works, the best ways to work with it and more. Our thanks for directing us to this one goes to arhombus, and _toofarnorth helpfully shared the PDF from the presentation.

A Free Tool

pgAdmin is a nice feature-filled, open-source administration and development platform for PostgreSQL. Appreciation for directing us to this one goes to owenthetechie, who particularly likes this "GUI manager for postgresql."

Another Tutorial

Introduction to Structured Data is a 4-part blog series explaining exactly what 'Structured Data' means and how it is useful in the context of network engineering. Our appreciation for this suggestion goes to packetgeeknet.

Another Free Tool

Sharp SNMP Library is an open-source library that offers basic SNMP functionality on multiple platforms. hombre_sabio appreciates it for, ".NET and Mono. It functions as a source code repository for SNMP. Sharp SNMP Library is one of the open-source tools that can be integrated into Windows. It requires Visual Studio 2019 and .NET Core SDK for compilation."

One More Free Tool

Context Editor is a fast, powerful Windows text editor that was originally created as a secondary tool for developers. Thanks for this suggestion go to QuietThunder2014, who adds, "Lightweight Text Editor. Really good for HTML, PHP, Java, Anything with Code."

P.S. Bonus Free Tools

UVexplorer is one of the fastest available network mapping tools for discovering, documenting and monitoring network devices and services. While larger organizations would fall into the paid tier, their free version works for up to 500 devices and includes all of the key features.

ITFlow is an open-source system designed to handle three common MSP responsibiliy areas: client documentation, ticketing and invoicing/accounting integrated into one system. Marcus explains, "It’s an IT documentation, ticketing and accounting system for small MSPs. It’s fairly early beta but is a fully functional tool at the moment, and a fairly good alternative to ITGlue."

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