Justin M. Brant - SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor: Deployment and Administration

Justin M. Brant has over 15 years of IT industry experience. As an adolescent, he was mentored by his grandfather Edgar J. Reynolds, a retired Naval Oceans Systems Center (NOSC) Electronic Engineer, who trained him on systems such as Apple II, Macintosh Plus, and Windows 2.x.

His grandfather's guidance led to a position at Datel Systems, where he began his career in the IT industry. Shortly thereafter, Justin and his brother Gregory created Blue Sun Design LLC, a consulting group focused on the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Framework, designed to support small to medium-sized business networks. He later joined the Biomedical Research Institute of America Institutional Review Board (BioMed IRB) as the Network Administrator, where he maintained the IT infrastructure consistent with FDA regulations for electronic records and patient confidentiality.

Presently, Justin is the Technical Support Manager at Integrated Default Solutions (IDSolutions), where he manages a team of five help desk technicians supporting 1,300 enterprise users nationwide. His position is multifaceted, involving network support, strategy, design, transition, and operation. His primary responsibilities include refining processes and security measures through developing and maintaining the IDSolutions Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) manual. In addition, he is the in-house specialist for the ShoreTel PBX & ECC VoIP system.

I would like to dedicate this book to my grandfather, Edgar J. Reynolds, for being ahead of his time and sparking my interest in technology. I would like to thank Fred Fox and Gary Shkedy, Executive Directors at BioMed IRB, who were pivotal mentors regarding IT health care security regulations; also, David Brassfield, Amelia Cline, Jeremy Phillips, Petersan Jean-Pierre, Troy Muncy, Sam Namiq, and Syneca Horton, for supporting this project as technical reviewers and advisors, and my mother Vicki Aznoe, for encouraging me to continuously write. In addition, I would like to thank the Packt Publishing team for their excellent ongoing communication and constructive feedback.

Sam Namiq is a highly motivated and knowledgeable technology professional skilled at administering complex computer systems running in Windows environments. He holds many industry certifications, such as CCNA, MCP, MCTS, MCITP 2008:EA, and MCSA 2012. He has over 15 years of experience working in the IT field. He has experience in designing, deploying, and administering Active Directory (2003, 2008, 2008R2, and 2012), deploying and managing Symantec Endpoint Protection, deploying and administering Dell AppAssure, and deploying and administering Exchange Servers (2003, 2007, 2010, and 2013). In addition, he has experience in deploying and configuring SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM), Virtualization using ESXi and Hyper-V, Cisco routers and switches, and many other IT solutions.

Jeremy D. Phillips works as a software programmer/developer in San Diego, CA. He has been writing code since the early 90s starting with DOS on monochrome screens in grade school, and has an interest in reverse engineering and software security.

I'd like to thank my family for providing consistent support in my endeavors.