IT professionals in nonprofit and SMB companies often face the challenge of deploying and protecting fully equipped IT environments with tight budgets and smaller teams (in some cases, even as a 1-man-show). This session will cover some best practices and specific examples of solutions and tools that IT professionals can use to deploy a winning IT infrastructure and strategy. The topics covered will include servers, networking, storage, and a few tips and tricks from Windows Server 2016. There will also be an open discussion and Q&A; time in the second half of the session.

Virtualization has simplified and consolidated server deployment in modern IT environments. New servers which once took weeks to order, rack-mount, and configure can now be deployed in seconds. Microsoft's Hyper-V offers a free way for companies to get started with virtualization and even save money by using existing hardware. This session will cover the basics of Hyper-V 2016 including installation and configuration, installing and managing virtual machines, basic PowerShell commands, and some best practices.

IT solutions and equipment can be very expensive, and often, your organization simply doesn't have the budget to pay for these services. Fortunately, you don't have to break the bank to deploy a network of servers, firewalls, and switches. This session will provide some examples of how IT professionals can manage costs effectively as well as take advantage of free solutions to build a good IT infrastructure with limited resources. Examples will be based upon the speaker, Josh's experience in managing the IT infrastructure of Fred Rogers Productions, a small nonprofit children's television production company.