If you have a server running Lights Out Management and you’re Full Disk Encrypting the boot volume where you have to enter a password to fire up the OS/decrypt the boot volume and you reboot the host, then what might you expect to happen when you power the system back on? I’m not saying not to use FDE with your servers, just think through whether or not certain features will conflict with one another… Just a thought.
-
-
Nagios in 5 Minutes
When I go to install something I typically look for a virtual appliance to save me the time of having to build it out from scratch. The packages themselves rarely take long to install, but there are always dependencies and then there’s something weird with CPAN or whatever. Next thing I know I am I stuck in the mire of dependency hell. Instead, these days I look for a virtual appliance first, which in many cases is built by the team who develops the package itself (be it commercial or FOSS). Virtual appliances in turn gives me more time to spend on configuration. Furthermore, if everything is on a nice, light virtual machine then…
-
Using Final Cut Server to edit over a WAN?
Maybe you will, maybe not… In terms of how it taxes the network, clips will typically be 5 to 25MB per second (big B there By the Way) according to how many frames per second and other design considerations. Obviously even if there is a 5MB pipe, the clips are likely too big to edit given a live master asset so you’d need to cache locally, which means for each clip (and however many clips in a project) you’re talking about that much data caching to the local host before you can start editing. To put this into a pseudo-real-world scenario (taking collisions, encryption and network latency out of the…
-
Using OpenDNS for Web Content Filtering
OpenDNS is a great tool for free (kinda’), community managed web content filtration. We see this used more in education customers than corporate customers, but essentially you point your DNS at them (or your DNS servers as the case may be) and they filter out different kinds of content. As is often the case with free apps, you’re not going to get all the features you might get with some other applications, but OpenDNS is a great start, especially if you’re not currently doing any kind of filtering. To integrate it is very straight forward: sign up for a free account and define the address for your network in their…
-
Fireplotter
If you have a number of Cisco devices you’d like to monitor you might want to check out Fireplotter. Fireplotter is a visualization tool that shows open connections, traffic loads and other pertinent information about your Cisco deployment. The graphs are cute, but not as informative as some other tools that we’ve grown to know and love like MRTG, etc. But, what Fireplotter lacks in intensity it more than makes up for in ease of use and deployment. Also, you can use it in conjunction with other monitoring tools if you just want quick and real-time visual monitoring of bandwidth.
-
WiMax Enabled Laptops
Lenovo has released the ThinkPad W700, a WiMax enabled laptop. Sprint is pushing Xohm, their WiMax unit heavily as the next big thing: a mobile broadband network. Not nationwide yet, but Lenovo is hoping it will be, with HP, Dell and Acer quickly following. The network is currently running in Baltimore with plans to expand into Washington and Chicago. Speeds are fast enough for VoIP and the cost is about the same as the cellular broadband service, at $30 per month. Is Xohm the next big thing? We’ll see…
-
WAN Optimization
Latency is the bane of my existence. Latency is the kind of thing you just can’t typically fix when you’re talking site-to-site communications. But you can mitigate it. These days I’m experimenting around with a variety of WAN optimization tool kits, from Riverbed’s Steelhead appliances to F5 to various open source offerings. For SMB/CIFS the various offerings can be pretty cool. Most products require an appliance at both ends to do proper optimization, but I like that Riverbed has a client app that can run on the Mac. Having said that, nothing seems to really optimize AFP the same way that SMB can be optimized. Maybe there isn’t a market…
-
Domain Tasting
Assumption for a Domain Taster: If a domain can generate over $6.00 a year in PPC revenue then someone will register it and someone will place PPC advertising on it. Read more here: http://icannwiki.org/Domain_tasting
-
Network Terminology
1000Base-LX/FX Gigabit Ethernet over fibre optic cable 1000Base-T 1000Mbps, All four pairs of Cat6 cable utilized at 250Mbps per pair 100Base-FX 100 Mbps Ethernet data transmissions over Fibre optic cable 100Base-LX Long wavelength fibre optic transmissions at 100 Mbps. 100Base-SX Short wavelength fibre optic transmissions at 100 Mbps. 100Base-T2 100 Mbps Ethernet running over two twisted pairs 100Base-T4 Four pairs of Cat3 or better cable. Transmits at 25Mbps on all four pairs. 100Base-TX 100 Mbps Ethernet running over twisted pair copper. Full duplex 10Base-2 Thin Ethernet, called thin net or coax 10Base-5 Thick Ethernet cable capable of data transmissions up to 500 meters. 10BaseT 10 Mbps Ethernet running over twisted…
-
Need a Cheap Switch that Supports PoE
The FS108P from NetGear isn’t so bad…