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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
last command in Linux with Examples – View history of user logins
This last 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 last command. You may be working with other system administrators and developers […]
50 Top Server Monitoring, APM and Observability Tools
Back in 2014, I compiled a list of top server and application performance monitoring solutions. Sharing that list publicly was a great way to gain feedback and recommendations on other tools available. Over time that list grew from 20 to over 100 server monitoring and APM solutions! Because of its growing size, I’ve created a smaller, more […]
Using the find command in Linux with examples
This find 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 the ~ 90 commands geared toward Linux sysadmins and Linux power users. Let’s continue this series with the find command. The find command is part of findutils which […]