By Clement DeLarge on January 30th, 2010
Havoc \Hav"oc\, v. t. To devastate; to destroy; to lay waste. [1913 Webster]
I’ve seen some really negative reviews on the iPad and it’s potential and feature set. I’ve talked to some friends about it, mostly PC users, that are less than thrilled with what the iPad has to offer. I can understand people potentially not wanting to go out and jump on the boat immediately due to costs, but the shortsightedness of the negative reviewers never ceases to amaze me.
Continue reading The iPad, to wreak havoc on current tech? →
By Clement DeLarge on December 7th, 2009
As I’ve upgraded my lab environment to vSphere over the weekend, I’ve been running across the occasional VM that fails to allow me to upgrade it’s VMware Tools. This seems to be predominantly happening with my Windows Server 2008 VMs.
I’ve received various error messages including ‘can’t find vmware tools.msi’ looking at c:\windows\installers, and messages stating that Installation cannnot continue because a previous version is installed, even though it had just been removed. FRUSTRATING! Fortunately, this isn’t the first time people are running across it and there’s a VMware KB article on how to address this.
Issues as noted on the VMware KB:
- Unable to upgrade existing VMware Tools
- Unable to upgrade existing installation of VMware Tools because the previous installation fails to be removed
- The uninstall feature of VMware Tools fails to complete, and finally
- Cannot uninstall VMware Tools.
All this boils down to ‘IT’S BROKE! HOW CAN I FIX IT!?’
Keep Reading…
Continue reading VMware Tools Fail During Upgrade / Uninstall →
By Clement DeLarge on December 5th, 2009
UPDATED 12/5/2009 to include vSphere commands.
This is a quick note, mostly to help remind me and hopefully help someone else out.
You can use standard Linux commands to connect an ESX host to a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. You can use a NAS to store things like ISO’s and backups. I have many gig’s of ISO’s and I really don’t like them taking up valuable storage on my ESX host. In production, they’d be taking up SAN space, so I offload them to a Buffalo Terastation, and use Linux commands to mount the Terastation so that ESX can utilize it.
First you can make a directory under vmimages.
mkdir /vmimages/ISO2
ISO2 is the directory that you are creating. For me, ISO already points to a local directory on my server where I keep one or two ISO’s that I am continually using. Then you can run the command:
(ESX 3.5) mount –t smbfs //[nas]/[folder] /vmimages/ISO2
(vSphere) mount –t cifs //[nas]/[folder] /vmimages/ISO2
Continue reading Use Console to Connect ESX to a NAS →
By Clement DeLarge on December 5th, 2009
Tonight I decided to go on the magical journey of upgrading my ESX 3.5 environment to vSphere using the Host Update Utility. I’m usually a firm believer in ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!’ but this time I decided to take the plunge and see what happens.
A few months ago, I ran through the Host Update Utility and failed a hardware compatibility check. I was running a few Intel Pro/100 NICs that ESX 3.5 was more than happy to work with but vSphere said, NO WAY. After tracking down a few Broadcom 5701 NICs, installing them without a hiccup, I honestly still considered sticking with ESX 3.5, but after talking to a few friends who have had no trouble with their upgrades, I figured the most that I had to lose was a little time. I ran through the wizard again, of the Host Update Utility, it complained about nothing this time and continued.
After a short while, maybe 10 minutes or so, I was up and running on vSphere 4. No hiccups! I immediately started booting up VMs. I ran into my first problem. 
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Continue reading Upgrading ESX 3.5 to vSphere 4 Using Host Update →
By Clement DeLarge on December 2nd, 2009
Here’s the scenario, I decided to try out Subversion as a source control repository on a Windows Server 2008 server, attached to a Win Server 2008 domain, with ISA Server forwarding HTTP traffic. After doing a little bit of research, I decided to give VisualSVN Server a try. If you don’t know it, it’s a very small footprint product produced by VisualSVN Limited, that installs Subversion and an Apache server, on Windows, to handle the HTTP connection to SVN (Subversion).
The product installed and configured very easily, ‘hats off’ to VisualSVN, and I was immediately able to connect to it from internal on my network. There are a few self-explanatory questions that are posed in the installation wizard. Tough things like where do you want to store your repositories. 
(If you’re going to use a file share as a repository, make sure that you use the UNC and not a mapped drive.)
I’m amazed that I’ve come across yet another tech product that is actually behaving as advertised. Is it just me, or is that odd???
Not the fault of VisualSVN, I began to run into configuration issues when I tried to route the traffic through ISA Server.
Keep Reading…
Continue reading Windows Server 2008 and Subversion over HTTPS →
By Clement DeLarge on November 10th, 2009
This post picks up where the last post left off. In the last post, we created a Windows Server 2008 R2 Active Directory Domain Controller and stopped short of going on to add Certificate Services into the mix.
If you’re not sure if you need certificate services for your environment, it never hurts to have it available. It does not add much overhead so for development environments and small businesses you can consider adding the role to a DC (domain controller) as we are here. Certificate Services will allow you to issue certificates to your internal resources, use client/server certificates for authentication, and set up SSL enabled websites.
I believe best practice is, and I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong, to set up an Enterprise Root CA (Certificate Authority), then set up one or more subordinate CA’s. You can then make your Root CA unavailable for access and have the subordinates handle all of the traffic without fear of compromising your Root CA. In this tutorial, we’ll just be installing and configuring a Root CA, but the process is basically the same for the subordinates.
Now that you’ve got some background information, onto the installation/configuration of Windows Server 2008 R2 Certificate Services.
In ‘Server Manager’, select Roles in the left pane, then Add Roles in the right pane. Place a check mark in the checkbox for Active Directory Certificate Services. Then click Next.
Keep reading…
Continue reading Install Certificate Services on Windows Server 2008 R2 →
By Clement DeLarge on November 9th, 2009
I posted a tutorial on creating a domain controller using Windows Server 2003, and decided to post an update that included step-by-step instructions for Windows Server 2008 R2. This should be the same for Windows Server 2008.
This is great for developers, testers, and anyone looking to learn Active Directory or deploy to a small network. If this is for a production deployment, you might want to bring in a professional to help you. There are many other things to consider, like ‘hardening’ your server and setting up Group Policy. Having an insecure or unprotected domain controller is inviting havoc on your network.
So without any further ado and in the immortal words of ‘Marv’, “Let’s get to it!”
In the Server Manager click on Add Roles.
Keep reading…
Continue reading Build a Windows Server 2008 R2 Domain Controller →
By Clement DeLarge on November 2nd, 2009
A few weeks ago, I installed Vyatta Open Source as a router internal to my network to see how it handled traffic between multiple subnets. To put it plainly, it worked like a champ! I put the router in place, assigned IP addresses to the NICs (network interface cards), and let the system do its thing. It now connects traffic between my physical network, my production virtual network, and my virtual lab running on ESX 3.5. I can easily manage most firewalls and routers that have a GUI but Vyatta presented a new challenge to me. In the case of this system, for some tasks it’s a lot easier to use the command line interface (CLI).
So without further ado, here’s the basics of Vyatta’s firewall.
Keep reading…
Continue reading Vyatta Firewall Basics and Configuration →
By Clement DeLarge on November 1st, 2009
Windows 7, along with Windows Vista, both have issues interacting with Buffalo Terastation and similar Buffalo products. This is due to updated NTLM security settings in both Windows 7 and Vista. The un-patched behavior is continued prompts to log in / authenticate to the NAS.
Buffalo has released a registry patch that allows Windows 7 and Vista to connect to their Terastation NAS products, by lowering the security level to Windows XP compatible NTLM security. This is a downgrade, but I have thus far had no problem with it. Check out the readme below that’s included in the download:
This registry patch files enables Windows(R) Vista(TM) PCs to
work with Buffalo NAS products. This patch is installed
directly onto Windows Vista PCs.
WARNING: This file is only for use on Vista PCs, it is NOT
required or supported on any other operating system.
Compatibility:
This patch is only required when using one of the following
Buffalo NAS products:- LinkStation (HD-HLAN)
- Gigabit LinkStation (HG-HGLAN)
- LinkStation Home Server (HS-DGL)
- TeraStation (HD-DTGL/R5)
- TeraStation Home Server (HS-DTGL/R5)
- TeraStation Pro (TS-TGL/R5)
Instructions:
1) Double click on the Buffalo_NAS_Vista_Support.reg file
2) Press the ‘Yes’ button when prompted.
3) Press the ‘OK’ button to exit the patch file.
4) Restart your Vista computer.
SECURITY NOTICE:
Applying this patch lowers the NTLM authentication
level to be compatible with some of Buffalo’s NAS products.
This NTLM authentication level is equivalent to the level
used in Windows XP.
Keep reading…
Continue reading Get Windows 7 Working with your Terastation →
By Clement DeLarge on October 26th, 2009
I’ve been running multiple subnets in my lab, and been dealing with the pain of having to VPN into each separate subnet when needing to make a change, test something, or deploy something. It’s been a learning experience and I’ve configured both OpenVPN and ISA Server 2006 VPN’s and successfully bounced around the various networks as necessary, but it’s been a real pain to have to VPN into one network, grab files, and then VPN into a different network to test and deploy those files, as an example. So I began a hunt for an open source router that would give me more control than Untangle, which is an excellent open source routing and firewall tool. Simply put, I wanted finer grained control than Untangle is designed to supply. As an example, I wanted to be able to filter network traffic based on mac addresses instead of IP addresses.
In my search, I came across Vyatta, which is an open source networking package that likes to compare itself to Cisco in functionality and control. I decided to check out their site and found that they offer a free ‘Community Edition’. I looked at the features of the community edition, then checked the VMware Appliances site and found that Vyatta has a pre-built VMware appliance. NICE! I filled out a short registration form, downloaded the appliance and all the documentation, which is thick to say the least, and fired up the appliance in VMware Workstation.
Continue reading Vyatta Community Edition, Open Source Router →
