I just got back from being in Las Vegas for a few days for the CSNA offsite meeting. Overall, I enjoyed the meetings as it helped me get a better understanding of the organization I'm working in, and to meet all of the members of my team in person for...

I read an interesting article posted here about a worm written to affect MySQL installations on Windows servers. In a nutshell, the worm replicates itself by scanning the internet and local networks for MySQL servers and brute-force guessing the root account password. Once it gains entry to a system, it launches connections to a remote IRC server and pushes itself into the background, allowing MySQL to run normally....

Yesterday I learned about a cool feature that is part of Exchange 2003. RPC over HTTP will allow you to connect to a firewalled exchange server without having to VPN past the firewall. There is a technet guide describing how to set this up at this link....

Peter Gulutzan wrote an interesting article describing his Mysql Triggers Tryout with the latest Alpha build of MySQL 5. I've been a long-time fan of MySQL. I first started using it in 1998, and have watched with great interest as it has matured. It seems that it is working very hard to match the features of the "enterprise" level SQL databases such as Oracle and MS SQL. For quite some time, many enterprise database (MS SQL, Oracle, etc.) advocates have pointed out the lack of features such as t...

This idea isn't new, but the fact that Bill is driving focus towards software interoperability is very encouraging. I remember the first time I heard of XML, thinking how it was a nice idea, but that it was a bit "overbilled" and "overhyped". However, I have to admit that using XML as a common interoperability mechanism is a great idea. It allows you to publicize your communication / interoperability schemas without requiring interfacing programs/programmers to understand all of the details abou...

I've spent some time checking out Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 (MOM) over the two weeks. If you don't know what it is, it's a solution designed to manage the operations of servers and data center infrastructure. I'm extremely impressed by MOM 2005. Let me give you more background as to why. This is of particular interest to me specifically because of my experience with web hosting. In my early days of hosting, we built our own custom operations monitoring software/solution. It was very ba...