Since 30th June 2018, the PCI Security Standards Council has required that support for SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0 be disabled and, more recently, to disable TLS 1.1. Using TLS 1.2 and 1.3 is strongly recommended. In addition, as of July 2018, Google Chrome began to mark ‘HTTP’ websites as “not secure.” Over the past […]
Observability: 15 Industry-Leading Companies Discuss its Evolution
In this article, you’ll find recent commentary from executives and decision-makers of industry-leading observability providers for two key questions regarding the evolution of observability. Over the past year, millions of workers left their offices to work from home, while billions of consumers rapidly shifted online to access an expanding list of products and services. The […]
Tuning MySQL my.cnf? Avoid this common pitfall!
It took me some time to decide the title for this article. MariaDB has been fast replacing MySQL as a growing number of Linux distributions now default to MariaDB over MySQL. MariaDB is an enhanced, drop-in replacement for MySQL. Therein lies my predominantly self-made conundrum, MySQL or MariaDB? That said, the MySQL tuning advice below […]
Increase Performance and lifespan of SSDs & SD Cards
SSDs (solid-state drives) and SD (Secure Digital) cards have a limited number of writes before they wear out. To get the most out of this storage type, let’s investigate, then make a few adjustments to maximize the life of your SSDs and SD cards. Article refreshed from 6 years ago. Using iotop to monitor and […]
PHP Benchmarks: OPcache vs OPcache w/ Performance Tweaks
A few weeks ago, I wrote a short article highlighting GUI solutions for monitoring and controlling PHP OPcache. We all know that enabling PHP OPcache provides massive performance gains (see benchmark graph at the end of the article). In addition, since PHP 5.5, OPcache is now enabled by default. With these facts in mind, is […]
Choosing the Best Linux Server Distro (2021)
Are you in the process of choosing a Linux server distro (distribution) for your next project? This article will help you decide by pointing out the strengths of the top Linux server distributions in contention. If you are looking for a Linux desktop distro, look at this post instead: Choosing the Best Linux Distro for […]
5 Network Devices for work-from-home and Small Business
Over the past year, we’ve seen a mass migration from the office to the home office. This continues to increase the requirements for better network security, greater capacity, and additional capabilities. Small business and work-from-home networks must be more performant, reliable, accountable, and easier to manage. As such, network devices designed for consumers and small […]
grep command in Linux w/ examples
This grep command guide is a follow-up of my previous 90 Linux Commands frequently used by Linux Sysadmins article. Every week, or as time allows, I will publish articles on around 90 commands geared toward Linux sysadmins and Linux power users. Let’s continue this series with the grep command. Grep (global regular expression printer) searches through a file for a specific […]
100 top APM (Application Performance Monitoring) solutions
Looking for application monitoring tools and server monitoring solutions? On this page, I’ve listed the top application performance monitoring (APM), server monitoring, and observability solutions to date. The listings are updated frequently as APM and observability solutions continue a rapid evolution. While I haven’t tested all of these solutions, I’ve used more than a third […]
Best Linux Distros in 2021 for Beginner, Experienced and Expert users.
Are you searching for the best Linux distro (distribution) for your desktop computer or laptop to take you into 2021? This article will guide you to what I believe are the best Linux distros for beginner, experienced, and expert users. Whether you are a power user or just getting your feet wet, there are indeed […]