Aaron has worked in a range of IT roles, from server and network support, to workstation administration, consulting and service management. He currently works as a network architect and consultant with the Education sector. When not madly pounding on keyboards, he can usually be found racing sailboats, or riding his motorcycle on the back roads of Vancouver Island.
By Aaron Leskiw, CCDA, CCNA, MCSE, ITILv3, MCSA, A+ on April 26, 2012
Are you still storing password in spreadsheets, or worse, Word documents? Spreadsheets and other text-based files can have serious security holes – not to mention problems with lost password files, and inability to restrict who can access which passwords. Password sharing in a large enterprise can be very challenging because of the many different types […]
By Aaron Leskiw, CCDA, CCNA, MCSE, ITILv3, MCSA, A+ on March 29, 2012
Application Monitoring software can make the difference between knowing that a server went offline after the fact, and knowing that a server’s disk space has been running out for two weeks, and that URL response to your web-apps has been getting slower and slower. ManageEngine’s Applications Manager is an application monitoring system that can help […]
By Aaron Leskiw, CCDA, CCNA, MCSE, ITILv3, MCSA, A+ on March 21, 2012
The Problem: Admins receive an alert from your Network Management System when a random server crashes. But do they know which parts of the business rely on that server? Is it a crucial part of your e-commerce, or just a business support server that is not urgent to repair? As an IT manager, can you […]
By Aaron Leskiw, CCDA, CCNA, MCSE, ITILv3, MCSA, A+ on February 1, 2012
In today’s networks, bandwidth consumption seems to expand to use up any available bandwidth. Demand can be driven by business use of cloud services, VOIP and Video, online applications, and centralized services. But, it can also be consumed by users with their own devices like iPads, Android Phones, and laptops; or for personal use of […]
By Aaron Leskiw, CCDA, CCNA, MCSE, ITILv3, MCSA, A+ on January 31, 2012
Are you winning the battle to tame your network? Or are you constantly are surprised by servers running out of disk space and bandwidth shortages? Does the ring of your cell phone make you shudder and wonder what just broke? If you answered yes, then you need better network management software! ManageEngine OpManager can help […]
By Aaron Leskiw, CCDA, CCNA, MCSE, ITILv3, MCSA, A+ on January 16, 2012
Have you ever received complaints from your remote sites about poor network performance? Do you have service level agreements with your service provider with no way to verify their performance? This document will describe how you can address these issues using IP SLA technology. IP SLA is a feature included in the Cisco IOS software […]
By Aaron Leskiw, CCDA, CCNA, MCSE, ITILv3, MCSA, A+ on December 9, 2011
A good TFTP server should be part of every admin’s toolkit. We’ve rounded up some of the Best Free TFTP server applications we could find and compared them all below. But first some basics: What is TFTP? TFTP, or Trivial File Transfer Protocol, is a simple and basic file transfer protocol. It’s particularly useful for […]
By Aaron Leskiw, CCDA, CCNA, MCSE, ITILv3, MCSA, A+ on November 30, 2011
What is it? System Shepherd is primarily geared toward network and system admins, technology executives and application owners who want to “see what the end user sees” when it comes to application and network performance, even simulating the network speeds experienced by users in different locations around the world. How is it deployed? The monitoring […]
By Aaron Leskiw, CCDA, CCNA, MCSE, ITILv3, MCSA, A+ on November 8, 2011
Problem: Streaming media applications consume a lot of bandwidth, because they use multicast to deliver content. In most cases, the applications that are using multicast to deliver their content are not business critical applications. However, there are time s when streaming media IS the mission critical app and so needs to be prioritized. Answer: NetFlow […]
By Aaron Leskiw, CCDA, CCNA, MCSE, ITILv3, MCSA, A+ on May 24, 2011
The following is a guest post by: Dirk Paessler, founder/CEO, Paessler AG Every website owner understands the need to keep a close eye on their site to ensure peak performance and uptime, and thankfully, network monitoring technologies make this task relatively simple. The challenge arises in determining what exactly needs to be monitored. You want […]
By Aaron Leskiw, CCDA, CCNA, MCSE, ITILv3, MCSA, A+ on February 15, 2011
With German-engineered features ranging from basic SNMP monitoring and alerting, to Netflow collection and packet capture, Paessler’s PRTG is well worth taking a look at. Aaron peels back the layers of PRTG in his latest product review.
By Aaron Leskiw, CCDA, CCNA, MCSE, ITILv3, MCSA, A+ on December 31, 2010
If you’ve ever experienced the frustration of trying to identify exactly which workstation is clogging up your network with torrent downloads, then examining NetFlow data on your network could help out. In this article we round up 5 handy free tools to help you collect and analyze NetFlow data.
By Aaron Leskiw, CCDA, CCNA, MCSE, ITILv3, MCSA, A+ on November 26, 2010
Aaron combs through the new features and functionality in Spiceworks 5.0, the latest version of Spiceworks’ free network management suite. Find out how it stacks up.
By Aaron Leskiw, CCDA, CCNA, MCSE, ITILv3, MCSA, A+ on September 24, 2010
Email performance and reliability are essential in today’s business world. If your network management solution supports WMI, you can easily leverage it to manage Exchange servers with these tips from Ken Heller of Kratos Networks.
10 Website Performance Indicators Every Website Owner Should Be Monitoring
By Aaron Leskiw, CCDA, CCNA, MCSE, ITILv3, MCSA, A+ on May 24, 2011
The following is a guest post by: Dirk Paessler, founder/CEO, Paessler AG Every website owner understands the need to keep a close eye on their site to ensure peak performance and uptime, and thankfully, network monitoring technologies make this task relatively simple. The challenge arises in determining what exactly needs to be monitored. You want […]