How to survive in the ever-changing IT world

Posted on June 3, 2021 by workinghardinit

How to survive in the ever-changing IT world

How to survive in the ever-changing IT world is something that all IT professionals and developers want to figure out. No matter how junior or senior you are, no matter what level of expertise you have, it is a challenge for everyone. At least if they are honest to themselves and others.

The IT world changes at a very fast pace and longevity of technology seems to be a distant pipe dream. The only thing that has tenure it IT seems to be considered legacy and tech debt. But is that always the case? There is flip side to fast paced changes. The faster things change the shorter they last.

The faster things change the shorter they last

Today’s IT world is changing extremely rapidly in terms of technologies used, hardware and software lifecycle management, trends, and hypes. I have always said IT looks a lot like fashion-driven show business.

Everyone strives to keep up with these changes, both individuals and organizations. Can they in the end, or will we outrun ourselves? If we can at what cost? Quality, longevity, minimal viable products, bugs, journeys instead of products, etc.

The skill sets needed to make this happen are grown and groomed, not produced at will. All this while investing in education and training is often only lip service as the requirements change so fast, the willingness to do so is diminished. And as such we make our problems even bigger.

Join us for a chat

How to survive in the ever-changing IT world — Register here Upcoming Webinar: How to Survive in The Ever-Changing IT World – VirtualMetric – Infrastructure Monitoring Blog

Find out in a chat with Yusif Ozturk (Co-Founder and Chief Software Architect at
@VirtualMetric) and me how we view and think about these challenges. Companies must ensure their software is using up-to-date technologies and finding the best talent experienced with modern technologies. You need to adapt pretty fast so that you can survive. When a company creates a new software product and develops a new solution, everything changes in a short time. There are new programming languages, new frameworks, and new technologies coming to the market. One of the challenges that organizations face is the fast technology shifts, new skills needed, new experienced staff, etc. Maybe you will find some insights on how to survive in the ever-changing IT world.

There has been an error cropping your image

Posted on April 2, 2021 by workinghardinit

There has been an error cropping your image

Recently I was greeted with the following error on WordPress: There has been an error cropping your image. On Windows PHP 8.0 changed php_gd2.dll to php_gd.dll. That breaks picture cropping functionality in WordPress. How do I know? Funny you should ask! Well, because I ran into this issue soon after upgrading my PHP version to 8.0 on my WordPress blog server. Instead of success, I was greeted with the above-mentioned error message: There has been an error cropping your image.

I was researching how to fix this and while I found some possible causes, nothing applied to my situation. So, I kept digging deeper until I stumbled upon the fact that in PHP 8.0 for the GD extension on Windows the DLL file name changed from php_gd2.dll to php_gd.dll. Read up on this on PHP Watch.

Fixing it

I needed to edit the php.ini file in PHP 8 and alter the GD extension changed from php_gd2.dll to php_gd.dll. In its extension-less format change to extension=gd instead of extension=gd2.

As on Linux the GD extension is loaded with the name gd.so, which means that no changes are needed on Linux

What I did was edit the php.ini file under C:\Program Files\PHP\php-8.0.3-nts-Win32-vs16-x64 ( I run the x64 bit version, if you also have the 32 bit version change it there as well).

I changed the following lines:

[PHP_GD2]
extension=php_gd2.dll

[PHP_GD]
extension=php_gd.dll

I saved the file and that fixed it. No need even to restart IIS or the web site, that was it. I could crop my files again!

Conclusion

It’s the small things that get you. In this case just a small detail, that might also trip you up. I just hope that this helps some of you out there. The good news is it was fixed quickly, and it was the first issue I had since upgrading to PHP 8.0.3. So far, so good.

Response and feedback about the Veeam hardened repository presentation

Posted on March 24, 2021 by workinghardinit

Veeam hardened repository presentation

It is great to get so much response and feedback about the Veeam hardened repository presentation. So, first of all, I thank all those reaching out to me in regards to the TechNine virtual user group session I gave on this subject.

Most of you did so via the contact e-mail on my blog and not via a comment on the original blog post here. Many of you asked for a recording. Let’s address that first.

Where is the recording?

There is no recording. The TechNine user group tries to bring people together for the events and promote interactive discussions afterward. Hence, no recording is available. They do this to stimulate participation.

I did not make this presentation exclusively for TechNine, but they did get the world premiere. The good news is that I will be giving this session again and I will even be doing a webcast with my fellow Microsoft MVP and Veeam Vanguard Carsten Rachfahl about this. In the webcast, we will discuss the hardened repository at length and it will be published online.

So, nothing to worry about, you will get other opportunities to attend and you will have a recoding of the content reasonably soon.

Reaching out to me

Lately, I have noticed that my readers and social media followers seem to have gotten increasingly shy and do not ask their questions publicly via the blog comments section or social media.

That poses a challenge to me. While I would like to help you all individually, that approach just doesn’t scale. I have a job, family, life, and interest to pursue. I just cannot allocate the time to do so.

Veeam hardened repository presentation — I do explain this on my contact page!

Please ask you questions in the comments section of the relevant blog post and I will normally get to it. The benefit is that that public answer can help others as well with limited effort from myself. If the answer to a super interesting question is lengthy, I can decide to turn it into a blog post. That also helps all people out there. Thank you for being respectful of my time and sharing with the community yourself!

The Veeam hardened repository at the TechNine User group

Posted on March 9, 2021 by workinghardinit

The Veeam hardened repository

Just a quick blog post to let you all know I will be presenting on the Veeam hardened repository in Veeam Backup & Replication v11. I will do this at the TechNine user group meeting on March the 23rd. It is the world premiere of this presentation, so grab your seat and be able to tell your grandchildren you were there!

There is a tremendous amount of new and enhanced capabilities in v11, both small and big ones. But this one stands out because no matter who you are, a small business or a fortune 500 global enterprise, we are all at risk from ransomware and wipers. And guess what, the Veeam hardened repository gives you yet another option in your arsenal to make sure you can recover from such a disaster.

And end to end solution

In VBR v11 Veeam now offers complete end to end immutability for all your backup copies if you desire to do so. You can bring your own storage and so it leaves you the flexibility and freedom of choice you are used to with Veeam.

Like many of you, I like to stay up to date with new technology and implement it to solve real-world problems. Often coo tech is very forward-looking and foundational. This translates into “it is very early days yet”, “the code exists but you cannot use it yet”.

Well, this is not something that shows you the promises of tomorrow and then leaves you to go back empty-handed. That always feels like a bit of a letdown when you are dealing with your real-world, real-time issues. The Veeam hardened repository is available now to help address the challenges you are facing today! It doesn’t get any better than that. I will show you the cookie, you can have the cookie and you can eat the cookie! Want to play with it yourself? You can, right now with the free community edition of Veeam Backup & Replication v11!

Register!

What do you need to do? Register of cause! Do it right here. Make sure you show up in time and stay around for an interactive discussion afterward. We start at 20:00 on March 23rd, 2021. And yes it is all virtual as we plan to get rid of the coronavirus first and then get together in real life again.

I will explain why you need it, how to set it up, and I will dive under the hood to show how it gets the job done. You can now protect your hypervisor and supported backups end to end with immutability in the hardened repository, giving you the extra security and protection you might need to recovery from a ransomware event. There will be demos! You can read up on it here but I will go behind the scenes with you!

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How to survive in the ever-changing IT world