For switch documentation: Setup a tfpt server on the switch management lan. Every change in the config issue two commands wr mem - store the config in swtich memory, and wr net (now replace with some BS line like copy run blah, blah, but to hard to remember unless doing it regularly.)
Server Builds: No server is slotted into a rack until it is drawn in on the rack plan, and no CD is spun up in the drive until the configuration document is completed.
My favourite technique for making sure documentation is done and updated, get the new guy to do it. Then he/she has to go all around the campus, locating servers and getting serial numbers form all sorts of odd equipment and making sure all of the support aggreements are current and the contact details for the vendors are accurate. The other favourite is if I find new equpment that has been installed and is not labelled or documented, I get the installer responsible to audit all similar equipment to make sure there are no other ones missed out. After haivng to crawl around dozens of risers and labelling or confirming all switches etc are correct and documented, they don't often make the same mistake twice. We also have a password management system which also allows details like how to install the management console or the URL to access a system for management to be stored. My answer to any question about "What is the password for X", or "what the hell is the name of the server for X applicaiton" is "Its in the store" Then if it isn't, we add it 8) Only takes a few times for the newbies to start looking up the information themselves first.
The other key file is a massive Visio document with a summary page with a managment style overview, and then a document with everyhting in it in layers like an electircal diagram or building plan. Lay in the workstaitons VLAN, the switch management VLAN, the Servers VLAN, link to things that are self contained like all of the Firewalls and DMZ configurations. etc.
I have a good one from today. A webserver with an application that requires WebDAV on IIS. New vulerability in the WebDAV service announced by MS, no current patch. Workaround - umm, turn off WebDAV. Cheers MS.
Software install and patching is where linux currently rules. At work we are approacing patch quarter, where we arrange the outage of over 170 servers while we bring their patch levels up-to-date. Needless to say most of these are Windows servers. However we have about 10 Linux servers for various other duties. They have been constantly patched with critical updates in the past 6 months. No patches installed have "required" a reboot. simply a restart of some affected services in some cases. At my desk I have one linux worktion I use to manage most of the switches and linux servers on the net, and a Windows workstation for Office and MS only management software. I can't remember the last time I rebooted the linux workstation. The Windows box is on the corporate "twice a month" patch and reboot cycle. (Side note, the Linux box has half the RAM of my windows desktop, but I prefer to use the linux machine for most general browsing as it is faster than the Windows box.) As to getting one with Linux Preinstalled, I personally have never bought a desktop already built, and my laptops have been provided by work, but all end up dual booting 8) On th ewhole I have found setting up Linux to be much easier than XP or Vista, espcially at home as instead of having to dig out the CD's and licence keys for proprietary OS's, and then having to phone up for activation, I just download the current version of whatever distro I am currnetly using, burn and boot. 40 minutes later I usually have the machine set up and ready to go. The one time I have had linux on machine from the supplier was an Acer Aspire One. The installed Linpus Lite OS was so crippled I just reinstalled Ubuntu over it. Apparently Dell's ubuntu install is busted too.
To me the MS tax is when you go to a public and open website to find they have used proprietary systems requiring proprietary client software that is not available on clients other than the one MS provides.
For example - Office Live - requires the execution of windows binaries to install the Windows only client software for this cloud service. If you share documents with this, all of your intended audience will have had to pay their MS tax to view the content.
MS Office Communicator - it has a web gateway, and claim to support Firefox and Safari on multiple platforms, but what you can't do is join meetings or make phone calls through the web client. You have to have installed the Windows only communicator client to fully use the software. Therefore all your employees using this form their homes will have to make sure they have paid their MS tax and have at least one windows device at home.
Want to view content encrusted with Windows Media DRM - Have to run Windows MediaPlayer and have paid your MS tax. iTunes is nearly as bad, but at least you have the choice of Windows or OS X, but as Apple owes it's survival this century to MS, it's really just the MS tax again.
The Apple Tax - It is still cheaper to buy a Macbook (even at NZ$1000 more than the closest PC competitor with the same disk CPU and RAM) than to pick up a PC and add AV software and firewall software, and renew that for the next 3-5 years. If you buy now you will only get Vista. Win7 is expected to be approx NZ$500 for a premium upgrade just for the OS. Office2010 likely to be at least NZ$300 or more. Apple Offer the "Box set" OS X 10.5.6, iLife09 and iWork09 for just NZ$419 upgrade from any previous OS X version. http://store.apple.com/nz/product/MB997Z/A?fnode=MTY1NDAzOA&mco=MzA3MTE3Ng It's still a tax though 8) Just less over the lifetime of the machine. 8)
Re:Mac abstraction affects the non-savvy...
on
Safari 4's Messy Trail
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
What about the porn mode, I mean the private browsing option?
Several Brand new servers with VI3 installed 2 weeks ago, left to run to burn in, first production guests moved onto them on Friday, Saturday sees CPU voltage regulator in one go pop, dead server. It would have been nice to just have the the Exchange server keep on rocking until Monday when we could replace the hardware, but no, now I've spent my Saturday morning going into work and fixing it. However thanks to VM, the HighAvailbility service did restart the guests automatically, but I did have to repair a damaged mailstore. 8(
SQL server is a great example. Most of the time on dedicated hardware you might have one SQL server with several Databases and maybe even SQL instances. These will happly share the multiple CPUs torun seperate apps concurrently, but most queries in SQL execute in a single thread.
With VMs, as you dont have to pay $$$ for more hardware, only software licences, we have seen more customers simply provision another single CPU SQL server in VM for general duty work. These would generally have no tuning in the applications or queries for multithreading, so they work fine in single CPU. Disk IO tends to be the biggest bottleneck.
It keeps a running copy on the failover host, reading from the same storage as the active host. It's as if the server were about to complete VMotion without having just done the final step. outage time is a small hiccough, less than a second. Current running sessions just carry on. If its uploading a file to someone, it just carries on. The outage is well withing the tollerance of typical TCP sessions.
Umm, IBM ship PowerPC blades with multiple CPUs' on them, and have most of them disabled untill licences are paid to activate them, giving the systems a down-time-free upgrade on demand. Great if you are a start up, and you have your pilot webserver, then the next week demand jumps, so you just pay to unlock more CPUs'.
I think this patement sounds again like a patent for the frikken-obvious!
The biggest issue I have with lots of small payments is that I have to give my credit card number out to a huge number of on line merchants. Now iTunes has gone DRMfree I buy from them. I'd buy from Amazon too if they would sell me ebooks outside the U.S. Until then the only way I can get many ebooks is from the pirates.
Yeah, i was jsut wondering how many moviesyou could torrent over a mobile conncetion? Here in NZ, the cost of mobile data means it would be cheaper to go and buy the blueray of a movie 4 times than to download a 700MB rip of it on vodafones 3G network. What is it liek overseas?
I had a paypal account with an NZ credit card, iTunes US store required a US address (Before it came to NZ) but luckily there was a sign up system that allowed you to use your Paypal account to verfy your credit card. Viola, I had a US iTunes account 8) Then realised DRM sucked, and hardly ever bought anything from them. Allofmp3.com did really well out of me until visa stopped letting them process their orders.
Now let me see, I can buy a book or a CD/DVD from Amazon.com and have it shipped to me here in NZ, but I can't download movies/mp3's or buy ebooks or listen to pandora.com? Umm, I wonder why the pirates win? Hey America, you are only one country, not the whole friken world!
I guess it might be the byproduct of being the only country to actually have used atomic weapons in war. Maybe they really are afraid of anyone who might be able to do it to them too 8) IMHO, a properly run Nuke reactor is greener than the same power generated by solar. But the trick is that if a solar panel overheats and goes boom, it it much easier to clean up.
I've got a chipped XBox, but I still bought most of the games I play, even if they are second hand. Where I did make copies was to play on both my XBoxes 8) I also have an iPhone, now this is hacked, but I still buy apps from the app store. Why, becuase I get just as much fun out of some of the games as I did on my XBox, but the games only cost $6 instead og $100. I used to browse the Gamesman store and think, "Nice games, but will I really get $100 work of fun out of this for the limited amount of time I actually spend playing computer games?" Usually the answer was no.
On my laptop, I've downloaded nearly all of the software on it, but then It's Linux 8) I also have a Mac Mini, apart from the initial purchase, I have spent $0 on software thanks to opensource. Not a single pirated app in site. (just about everything great in Linux is usually also ported ot the Mac)
We never se savings in IT back as extra budget for new gear. We moved our entire server room to a new room, with more efficent coolers, better rack layout, new SAN with lower power consumption, but you think I can get them to sping for a $3000 iMac instead of the $800 dell I have to use at my desk?
The easiest system to hack is the meatware at the desk. Want a password for a company, call their helpdesk and say you just locked yourself out. Many wont try and verify who you are. Want to steel a credit card number, ask for the number to prove you are over 18 before signing up for a "free" service or download. (Bye bye, Mobile Me, you're not getting me with that porn website trick 8)) Most hacks in a company will eventually come from employees or someone who has legitimate access to the systems they are supposed to maintain. We have just gone through and moved all of our servers into a firewall DMZ, and the clients can only talk to the servers they need. Multiple VLANs and subnets segregate client traffic, and most of the client VLANs won't route to each other. If you have to share it, it will be on a server 8). I use torrents a lot, but vever for anything that would requre admin rights to install. If they've stolen someones software, why do you think they wont try and steel your computer too?
Now I have an Acer Aspire one, and I keep thinking, this only needs a keyboard that doesnt flex and an aluminium case and it would be about the same as a macbook Air, just smaller and with more USB ports. The air will still kick it's ass for graphics and general speed becuase it had better graphics and a proper SSD HDD, but Ther Acer only costs NZ$500, and an Air costs NZ$3000
I always wondered if someone had ever filed a patnet on the process of using some form aof mechanical switch, or button, that when pressed sends a code to a computing device that can be used as some form or input to a system. The data could then be stored and manipulated on some way, and results stored in memory, displayed on an output device or used in another operation.
Seems like many of the software patents MS have sued over. Method to describe shortening long filenames to 8 characters - ring a bell TomTom?
I think there is liek a Mutually Assured Distruction effect with patents. SO many of the big boys hold so many patents for just about everything, that is the unleased the lawyers all of the major companyes would just implode under the debt owed to the lawyers.
Slashdot Mirror
For switch documentation:
Setup a tfpt server on the switch management lan.
Every change in the config issue two commands
wr mem - store the config in swtich memory, and wr net (now replace with some BS line like copy run blah, blah, but to hard to remember unless doing it regularly.)
Server Builds:
No server is slotted into a rack until it is drawn in on the rack plan, and no CD is spun up in the drive until the configuration document is completed.
This mostly works at keping things in check.
My favourite technique for making sure documentation is done and updated, get the new guy to do it. Then he/she has to go all around the campus, locating servers and getting serial numbers form all sorts of odd equipment and making sure all of the support aggreements are current and the contact details for the vendors are accurate.
The other favourite is if I find new equpment that has been installed and is not labelled or documented, I get the installer responsible to audit all similar equipment to make sure there are no other ones missed out. After haivng to crawl around dozens of risers and labelling or confirming all switches etc are correct and documented, they don't often make the same mistake twice.
We also have a password management system which also allows details like how to install the management console or the URL to access a system for management to be stored.
My answer to any question about "What is the password for X", or "what the hell is the name of the server for X applicaiton" is "Its in the store" Then if it isn't, we add it 8) Only takes a few times for the newbies to start looking up the information themselves first.
The other key file is a massive Visio document with a summary page with a managment style overview, and then a document with everyhting in it in layers like an electircal diagram or building plan.
Lay in the workstaitons VLAN, the switch management VLAN, the Servers VLAN, link to things that are self contained like all of the Firewalls and DMZ configurations.
etc.
I have a good one from today. A webserver with an application that requires WebDAV on IIS. New vulerability in the WebDAV service announced by MS, no current patch. Workaround - umm, turn off WebDAV.
Cheers MS.
Software install and patching is where linux currently rules.
At work we are approacing patch quarter, where we arrange the outage of over 170 servers while we bring their patch levels up-to-date. Needless to say most of these are Windows servers. However we have about 10 Linux servers for various other duties. They have been constantly patched with critical updates in the past 6 months. No patches installed have "required" a reboot. simply a restart of some affected services in some cases.
At my desk I have one linux worktion I use to manage most of the switches and linux servers on the net, and a Windows workstation for Office and MS only management software. I can't remember the last time I rebooted the linux workstation. The Windows box is on the corporate "twice a month" patch and reboot cycle.
(Side note, the Linux box has half the RAM of my windows desktop, but I prefer to use the linux machine for most general browsing as it is faster than the Windows box.)
As to getting one with Linux Preinstalled, I personally have never bought a desktop already built, and my laptops have been provided by work, but all end up dual booting 8)
On th ewhole I have found setting up Linux to be much easier than XP or Vista, espcially at home as instead of having to dig out the CD's and licence keys for proprietary OS's, and then having to phone up for activation, I just download the current version of whatever distro I am currnetly using, burn and boot. 40 minutes later I usually have the machine set up and ready to go.
The one time I have had linux on machine from the supplier was an Acer Aspire One. The installed Linpus Lite OS was so crippled I just reinstalled Ubuntu over it. Apparently Dell's ubuntu install is busted too.
To me the MS tax is when you go to a public and open website to find they have used proprietary systems requiring proprietary client software that is not available on clients other than the one MS provides.
For example - Office Live - requires the execution of windows binaries to install the Windows only client software for this cloud service. If you share documents with this, all of your intended audience will have had to pay their MS tax to view the content.
MS Office Communicator - it has a web gateway, and claim to support Firefox and Safari on multiple platforms, but what you can't do is join meetings or make phone calls through the web client. You have to have installed the Windows only communicator client to fully use the software. Therefore all your employees using this form their homes will have to make sure they have paid their MS tax and have at least one windows device at home.
Want to view content encrusted with Windows Media DRM - Have to run Windows MediaPlayer and have paid your MS tax.
iTunes is nearly as bad, but at least you have the choice of Windows or OS X, but as Apple owes it's survival this century to MS, it's really just the MS tax again.
The Apple Tax - It is still cheaper to buy a Macbook (even at NZ$1000 more than the closest PC competitor with the same disk CPU and RAM) than to pick up a PC and add AV software and firewall software, and renew that for the next 3-5 years. If you buy now you will only get Vista. Win7 is expected to be approx NZ$500 for a premium upgrade just for the OS. Office2010 likely to be at least NZ$300 or more. Apple Offer the "Box set" OS X 10.5.6, iLife09 and iWork09 for just NZ$419 upgrade from any previous OS X version. http://store.apple.com/nz/product/MB997Z/A?fnode=MTY1NDAzOA&mco=MzA3MTE3Ng
It's still a tax though 8) Just less over the lifetime of the machine. 8)
What about the porn mode, I mean the private browsing option?
Maybe this means that instead of Linux only being installed in the lowest end netbooks, it will be on the top end ones.
Will be great for the VM I use for the one or apps I have that just have no equivalent in 0SX or linux
Several Brand new servers with VI3 installed 2 weeks ago, left to run to burn in, first production guests moved onto them on Friday, Saturday sees CPU voltage regulator in one go pop, dead server. It would have been nice to just have the the Exchange server keep on rocking until Monday when we could replace the hardware, but no, now I've spent my Saturday morning going into work and fixing it.
However thanks to VM, the HighAvailbility service did restart the guests automatically, but I did have to repair a damaged mailstore. 8(
SQL server is a great example. Most of the time on dedicated hardware you might have one SQL server with several Databases and maybe even SQL instances. These will happly share the multiple CPUs torun seperate apps concurrently, but most queries in SQL execute in a single thread.
With VMs, as you dont have to pay $$$ for more hardware, only software licences, we have seen more customers simply provision another single CPU SQL server in VM for general duty work. These would generally have no tuning in the applications or queries for multithreading, so they work fine in single CPU. Disk IO tends to be the biggest bottleneck.
It keeps a running copy on the failover host, reading from the same storage as the active host. It's as if the server were about to complete VMotion without having just done the final step. outage time is a small hiccough, less than a second. Current running sessions just carry on. If its uploading a file to someone, it just carries on. The outage is well withing the tollerance of typical TCP sessions.
Umm, IBM ship PowerPC blades with multiple CPUs' on them, and have most of them disabled untill licences are paid to activate them, giving the systems a down-time-free upgrade on demand.
Great if you are a start up, and you have your pilot webserver, then the next week demand jumps, so you just pay to unlock more CPUs'.
I think this patement sounds again like a patent for the frikken-obvious!
The biggest issue I have with lots of small payments is that I have to give my credit card number out to a huge number of on line merchants. Now iTunes has gone DRMfree I buy from them. I'd buy from Amazon too if they would sell me ebooks outside the U.S. Until then the only way I can get many ebooks is from the pirates.
I'd be changing providors soon after seeing this sort of filtering.
Yeah, i was jsut wondering how many moviesyou could torrent over a mobile conncetion?
Here in NZ, the cost of mobile data means it would be cheaper to go and buy the blueray of a movie 4 times than to download a 700MB rip of it on vodafones 3G network. What is it liek overseas?
I had a paypal account with an NZ credit card, iTunes US store required a US address (Before it came to NZ) but luckily there was a sign up system that allowed you to use your Paypal account to verfy your credit card. Viola, I had a US iTunes account 8)
Then realised DRM sucked, and hardly ever bought anything from them.
Allofmp3.com did really well out of me until visa stopped letting them process their orders.
Yeah, it's not theft if you aren't allowed to buy it is it?
They certainly can't claim a lost sale when they claim for damages.
Now let me see, I can buy a book or a CD/DVD from Amazon.com and have it shipped to me here in NZ, but I can't download movies/mp3's or buy ebooks or listen to pandora.com?
Umm, I wonder why the pirates win?
Hey America, you are only one country, not the whole friken world!
I guess it might be the byproduct of being the only country to actually have used atomic weapons in war.
Maybe they really are afraid of anyone who might be able to do it to them too 8)
IMHO, a properly run Nuke reactor is greener than the same power generated by solar. But the trick is that if a solar panel overheats and goes boom, it it much easier to clean up.
I've got a chipped XBox, but I still bought most of the games I play, even if they are second hand. Where I did make copies was to play on both my XBoxes 8)
I also have an iPhone, now this is hacked, but I still buy apps from the app store. Why, becuase I get just as much fun out of some of the games as I did on my XBox, but the games only cost $6 instead og $100.
I used to browse the Gamesman store and think, "Nice games, but will I really get $100 work of fun out of this for the limited amount of time I actually spend playing computer games?" Usually the answer was no.
On my laptop, I've downloaded nearly all of the software on it, but then It's Linux 8) I also have a Mac Mini, apart from the initial purchase, I have spent $0 on software thanks to opensource. Not a single pirated app in site. (just about everything great in Linux is usually also ported ot the Mac)
We never se savings in IT back as extra budget for new gear.
We moved our entire server room to a new room, with more efficent coolers, better rack layout, new SAN with lower power consumption, but you think I can get them to sping for a $3000 iMac instead of the $800 dell I have to use at my desk?
The easiest system to hack is the meatware at the desk. Want a password for a company, call their helpdesk and say you just locked yourself out. Many wont try and verify who you are. Want to steel a credit card number, ask for the number to prove you are over 18 before signing up for a "free" service or download.
(Bye bye, Mobile Me, you're not getting me with that porn website trick 8))
Most hacks in a company will eventually come from employees or someone who has legitimate access to the systems they are supposed to maintain.
We have just gone through and moved all of our servers into a firewall DMZ, and the clients can only talk to the servers they need. Multiple VLANs and subnets segregate client traffic, and most of the client VLANs won't route to each other. If you have to share it, it will be on a server 8).
I use torrents a lot, but vever for anything that would requre admin rights to install. If they've stolen someones software, why do you think they wont try and steel your computer too?
So what they have made is a U$2000 netbook?
Now I have an Acer Aspire one, and I keep thinking, this only needs a keyboard that doesnt flex and an aluminium case and it would be about the same as a macbook Air, just smaller and with more USB ports. The air will still kick it's ass for graphics and general speed becuase it had better graphics and a proper SSD HDD, but Ther Acer only costs NZ$500, and an Air costs NZ$3000
I always wondered if someone had ever filed a patnet on the process of using some form aof mechanical switch, or button, that when pressed sends a code to a computing device that can be used as some form or input to a system. The data could then be stored and manipulated on some way, and results stored in memory, displayed on an output device or used in another operation.
Seems like many of the software patents MS have sued over. Method to describe shortening long filenames to 8 characters - ring a bell TomTom?
I think there is liek a Mutually Assured Distruction effect with patents. SO many of the big boys hold so many patents for just about everything, that is the unleased the lawyers all of the major companyes would just implode under the debt owed to the lawyers.
Microsoft actively sees pirated copies of XP/Vista as more of a competitor than OS X or any desktop Linux.