Exchange 2013: New Features and Changes, Part 1

Microsoft recently released Exchange Server 2013, an improved messaging platform that provides quite a few interesting features at various levels. There are major changes, and organizations will have to rethink the way they plan to maintain or integrate messaging in their infrastructure. The level of changes is not as dramatic as those seen between 2003 and 2007, but as you will see, certain things are dealt with differently. As of now, very few organizations have Exchange 2013 running, so it is certainly going to be interesting to see how this iteration of the product will interconnect with existing messaging solutions soon.

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SonicOS 5.8 Firmware Introduces the Dashboard — Part 1

The SonicWALL Visualization Dashboard gives you an interface to monitor your network in real time, providing flow charts of data, customizable rules, and flexible settings. With the Visualization Dashboard, you can view and sort real-time network and bandwidth data. This allows you to identify applications and web sites with high bandwidth demands, view application usage on a per-user basis, and anticipate attacks and threats encountered by the network. Here we will cover two new features available, the App Flow Monitor and Real-Time Monitor. Each feature provides you with updated streaming qualities. The Dashboard will appear as the first item on top of the SonicOS left-side menu.

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A Guide to Key Virtualization Terminology — Part 2

One of the most important steps in mastering a new technology is learning the associated terminology or vocabulary. In the IT field, this can be a very challenging step, as much of the terminology is often used inconsistently. Here we will define the terms associated with IT virtualization. It is mainly vendor-agnostic, but it does provide some vendor-specific terms, product names, and feature names used by VMware, Citrix, and Microsoft.

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