Updating appliance VMs can be a bit of daunting process since they are all usually different. vROPS (VMware vRealize Operations) is no different in that regard, but it’s a quite straightforward operation when you get understand the process.
Updating appliance VMs can be a bit of daunting process since they are all usually different. vROPS (VMware vRealize Operations) is no different in that regard, but it’s a quite straightforward operation when you get understand the process.
As everybody knows, console cables and their corresponding interfaces are a scourge on a network administrators existence. They are always too short, COM-ports get renumbered, Baud-rates are unknown, etc. By their very nature, you also have to be physically present in the vicinity of the box you’re trying to configure. Today we’re going to change all that, by constructing a wireless console cable adaptor with almost infinite range.
I can almost here people shouting something about SSH and Telnet to their screens, as well as something about the Airconsole. First and foremost, telnet and SSH are both wonderful, after you’ve configured the device, but for initial setup, they sadly can’t be used. Airconsole is quite nice, and I use it almost daily, but it’s useful when you want to sit somewhere comfortable when configuring a device in the same room as you, not so much when you want to be comfortable on a beach half a world away from the offending device.
This we’re going to change today, with one device, the B+B SmartFlex router.
The 2920 series switches from HPE/Aruba has a special feature that no other switches in the old ProCurve/E-Series line-up has; dedicated stacking interfaces. On other HPE switches, stacking merely facilitates “simplified” management, by allowing you to manage any switch in the stack from the stack commander’s CLI. On the 2920 series however, you can use dedicated stacking interfacing, giving you 2 20 Gbps links to other switches in the stack and merging two to four switches into one coherent switch. This is quite similar on how stacking works on some Cisco models, but the specialized stacking interfaces gives you higher speeds between the members. In this article, I’ll show you have to set up the commander switch and how to add switches to the stack once it’s created. I’ll also go into how it affects the configuration of the switches, which is quite crucial if you want to stack switches that are already in production.
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been playing around with a FreeBSD distribution that’s quite interesting, FreeNAS. FreeNAS basically turns any old box you have lying around into a NAS, though you should definitely not run it on any old box. The only problem was, I got a bit excited when setting up my system, so I configured a RAID-Z vdev for my zpool. Technically, this was not an issue at the time when I set up the pool, since I was using old leftover 160GB and 250GB drives. But after a while I replaced the 160GB drives with two 1 TB drives I had laying around. And a couple of days later, I ordered 2 4TB drives to replace the 250GB ones. And then RAID-Z started to be a problem. You see, RAID-Z suffers from the same problems as RAID5, aka. that if you set up an array with large SATA drives (1 TB or larger), and one drive fails, you’re almost guaranteed a bad day (if you’re not running enterprise grade drives, more on this later in a separate post). So before I went and installed the new drives I migrated my whole pool to a backup drive and destroyed the old vdev and pool. Here’s a short guide on how I, relatively successfully did it. Continue reading
I recently had to do a reinstall of Windows 10 on a 3 year old Lenovo desktop. I previously updated the machine from Windows 7 to Windows 10, and shortly thereafter the hard drive started to give intermittent issues, so I decided to upgrade the machine with a SSD and do a clean install of Windows 10 at the same time. Turns out, installing Windows 10 from scratch isn’t that easy, so here are some of the things I discovered while researching the issue.
If you have experienced a problem with the vSphere Client Integration Plug-In not working even though it’s installed in Google Chrome, you’re not alone. Seems like Google decided to disable NPAPI (Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface) from version 42 of Chrome onwards. The vSphere Client Integration Plug-In (henceforth known as the plug-in) utilizes the NPAPI to interact with Chrome, and Google is currently trying to phase out that particular API. The name should give you an idea of the age of that particular API (youngsters, go google Netscape and prepare to be amazed), and Google’s reasons for retiring it are quite understandable. VMware, on the other hand, are as usual quite tardy when it comes to supporting changes to Chrome, so it might be a while before we will see a new plug-in supporting a newer API.
A couple of days ago I was in the mood to do a French press tutorial, and for that I need lots and lots of pictures, and as I usual couldn’t locate a single one of my battery charger for my Canon 7D. As I travel a lot and switch between two camera bags depending on what’s useful, I quite frequently misplace my chargers. Normally they usually turn up after thorough search, but this time they were properly gone. This wouldn’t have normally been a problem either, as I always carry a second charged battery with me but luck would have it, it was flat as well. Me being an impulsive sort of guy from time to time, I went out and thought I would get the cheapest charger I could find to get be my until my proper chargers bothers to turn up. But at the shop I found this wonderful little cube.
It’s a dual battery charger, that takes either Canon LP-E6s or LP-E8s, or Nikon EN-EL 14s or EN-EL 15s. Do note that I wrote either, it can’t charge more than one type of battery simultaneously, and changing the adapter plates are a bit of a hassle as you’ll see later. Additionally it comes with an adapter plate so that 4 AA Ni-MH/Ni-CD batteries can be charged (perfect for your flash) and an USB charging outlet, as well as all sorts of international plugs and a car adapter.
When configuring network hardware over the network itself it’s very easy to issue a command that breaks the network connection to the switch, requiring you to visit the switch and connect to it with a console cable to fix the issue. This is not a big problem if the switch is just down the hall in a closet somewhere, but in today’s world a switch that you’re configuring might be hundred of miles away from where you’re sitting.
Of course this whole issue can be sidestepped by just thinking through what you’re doing before hitting the enter key, but in the real world this is not always an available luxury.
The solution to this problem is to cleverly utilize the “reload” command in combination with the “write” command.
