Tools
Tools for IT admins
17 tools for planning and checking infrastructure work. They are the same tools as the Engineering Labs, listed here by what they do. Check any result against the vendor documentation before you change a production system.
Calculators and lookups
Work out a value or look one up: subnets, ports, cron schedules, sizing.
- Apple Software Update Deferral and Enforcement CalculatorWork out when an iOS or macOS update becomes visible under a Declarative Device Management or legacy deferral, and when a DDM enforcement deadline forces the install.
- Bandwidth-Delay Product CalculatorCalculate exact data in flight from bandwidth and RTT, with decimal and binary units plus the minimum TCP receive-window capacity.
- Cron TranslatorValidate five-field Unix cron expressions, explain day-field OR semantics, and calculate deterministic upcoming execution times.
- Database Connection Pool SizerCalculate a per-pod connection-pool upper bound from database capacity, peak pod count, and an explicit operational reserve.
- FinOps EstimatorEstimate CI/CD compute cost from build volume, duration, retry overhead, and a user-supplied blended hourly rate, then compare target-duration scenarios.
- IPv4 and IPv6 CIDR PlannerNormalize IPv4/IPv6 networks, calculate exact ranges and audit batch allocations for containment, overlap, alignment and unused capacity.
- JWT DecoderStrictly decode compact signed JSON Web Tokens and inspect headers, claims, signature presence, and advisory time checks locally in your browser.
- Kafka / Event Stream Partition CalculatorCalculate the theoretical partition minimum for a throughput target using benchmarked per-partition producer and consumer rates.
- Kubernetes RBAC GeneratorConstruct safely serialized Kubernetes Role and RoleBinding manifests with validated names, subjects, resources, and verbs.
- Kubernetes Resource & Runtime ProfilerGenerate conservative Node.js, Go, or Java runtime starting policies for a supplied Kubernetes CPU and memory limit, with explicit caveats.
- Network Subnet SplitterValidate canonical IPv4 CIDR input, visualise subnet boundaries, and calculate exact equal-prefix splits.
- SLO and Error-Budget SuiteCalculate exact error budgets, observed SLI and versioned multiwindow burn-rate alert thresholds without floating-point loss.
Builders and generators
Produce a configuration or record you can paste and then check.
- Configuration Validator and Semantic Diff StudioValidate strict JSON/YAML, apply pinned schemas, generate a verified RFC 6902 patch and fingerprint RFC 8785 canonical configuration.
- DNS Record Builder & ValidatorBuild and statically validate common DNS records including SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MX, CAA and SRV with provider-ready fields.
Reviews and validators
Check a configuration or plan against a list of known failure points.
Simulators
Try a scenario and see what a change would do before you make it.
- Conditional Access What-If MatrixModel a set of Conditional Access policies against one sign-in and see which policies apply, why the others don't, and whether access is blocked, granted, or granted after MFA.
- Intune Assignment and Filter EvaluatorCheck whether a user and device receive an Intune app or policy: group include and exclude rules, assignment filters in include or exclude mode, and app intent conflicts.