Kip Ng

Is Your IT Environment Healthy?

by Kip Ng

Operating an IT system nowadays is a no doubt daunting task. As a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer (PFE), I have the honor of working with different customers of different sizes in different industries. I fully understand how overwhelming things can get. What I find it interesting is that while many companies are working towards adhering [...]

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How to Manually Capture an OS Image using ConfigMgr

by Kip Ng

In System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (ConfigMgr), you can install the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 and it has a task sequence template that you can use to automate the OS deployment, SysPrep it and then Capture the OS as an Image as well. These are all good, but sometimes you may want to do [...]

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IT Configuration Monitoring: What is it, and why do we need it?

by Kip Ng

Most companies today have some form of monitoring mechanism implemented to monitor different components of their IT system. There are various monitoring solutions out there. Some are more sophisticated than others, and, in general, there are different levels of monitoring available. I personally categorize most monitoring needs into the following five areas: Of course, I [...]

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Troubleshooting OSD Task Sequences in System Center Configuration Manager 2007

by Kip Ng

One of the most annoying things when we have a problem with OSD (Operating System Deployment) Task Sequences in Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (ConfigMgr) is that you don’t usually get any error indicating any problem. Most of the time, all you see is the following screen and, after a short wait, you get [...]

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How To Create a Certificate for a PXE Service Point in SCCM 2007

by Kip Ng

Most companies that I come across run System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007 mixed mode especially when they do not have any Internet-based clients. Of course, there are some companies who choose to use Native mode because of security requirements.  One thing about using Native mode is there’s heavy usage of certificates which can be [...]

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Visualizing Your IT Environment Using Technical Service Maps

by Kip Ng

One of the key factors for successful operations is monitoring. The most common questions I get when helping customers plan their monitoring needs are: "How do I know what to monitor?" and "How do I know my system is healthy?" Yes, two very simple questions but not always easy to answer, and if you can’t [...]

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Documentation: Yes, I know it’s a pain, but it’s needed.

by Kip Ng

As a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer (PFE), one of our primarily roles is to perform risk assessments on client IT environments. Of course, we always have very well defined scope as in which Microsoft product that we are reviewing. One of the major issues that always come up from these reviews is the lack of [...]

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IT Operations: Technology Is Not The Sole Answer

by Kip Ng

Most people in IT have a strong tendency to resolve a problem with technology or introducing more technologies into a solution. I‘m guilty on this count too. Well, you know what? Technology is not always the answer. 3 key elements to successful IT operations are People, Process and Technology. Believe it or not, most companies [...]

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IT Operations: The Reasons Why You Don’t Want To Be Unique

by Kip Ng

In today’s world, we are brought up in a society where we are taught to be first, to be different and to be competitive. We are frequently being urged to be unique in order to stand out among the crowd. There is no doubt that an element of uniqueness is essential in many different areas [...]

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How a Simple IT Operations Checklist Can Prevent a Load of Grief

by Kip Ng

6:05 p.m.: I was called and informed that the system had gone down. I rushed back to the office. 7:10 p.m.: I arrived and found that the drive containing the database had failed. How could it be? It was running on RAID-5. Well, let’s figure that out later and let’s fix the problem first. 7:30 [...]

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Why Smart IT Organizations Use Performance Baselines

by Kip Ng

This is one of those topics (like “Do you have a well-tested Disaster Recovery plan?”) that many of you may look at it and say “yes, yes, I know we need it”.   Let me give you some of the answers I got from some of my customers when I asked them if they have a [...]

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Service Level Agreements: Your shoes should not tell your feet how to grow

by Kip Ng

Everyone knows that your shoes should conform to the shape of your feet. Likewise, in IT, the design and architecture of a system should be dictated by a well-defined set of business requirements. As a Microsoft Certified Architect and Master, I have sadly come across a lot of environments where I believe the design was [...]

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