Blogs

Cisco ASA Hanging at ROMMON at Boot

Posted Thu, 01/31/2013 - 09:11 by MWalker

After factory defaulting an ASA 5510, we noticed it didn't boot to a default configuration. It booted up to the ROMMON prompt. As soon as you'd type "boot" or "boot device:/filename" it would happily boot for you. Adding a "boot device:/filename" to the config didn't make a difference.

Microsoft SQL Server Verion Info

Posted Wed, 01/23/2013 - 17:13 by MWalker

Recently had to look into SQL version numbers. Here's a quick table.

OSX VPN Client DES Support

Posted Thu, 01/17/2013 - 11:08 by MWalker


Simple answer: NO



Scenario

Changing Windows RDP port

Posted Thu, 01/17/2013 - 10:35 by MWalker

Sometimes it's nice to change the default listening port of the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) service. Running standard services on non-standard is a simple way to avoid scripted attacks against your systems. Turns out changing the RDP port is as simple as a registry setting and a reboot.

Look here:
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\TerminalServer\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\PortNumber

Distinguished Name (DN) of Logged in User on Windows7

Posted Wed, 11/21/2012 - 11:20 by MWalker

Recently I was in an environment where I don't have access to the AD servers and needed to find out the Distinguished Name (DN) of the user that was logged into a Windows7 system. There had to be a way right? A little research was required. Something like DSQUERY would work, but it is not a Windows7 tool out of the box. Eventually I found it... WHOAMI...


whoami /FQDN

ESXi Multiplathing Options

Posted Fri, 04/27/2012 - 10:01 by MWalker

From the VMware Multipathing KB Article here.

These pathing policies can be used with VMware ESX/ESXi 4.x and ESXi 5.x:

DELL PowerConnect - What does "iscsi enable" do?

Posted Fri, 04/06/2012 - 09:09 by MWalker

From DELL's "EqualLogic iSCSI Optimization for Dell PowerConnect Switches" whitepaper...


After enabling iSCSI, the following procedures occur automatically:

  • Jumbo Frames are enabled on all switch ports. Jumbo Frames enable transporting data in fewer
    frames to ensure less overhead, lower processing time, and fewer interrupts. By default, Jumbo

VMware - LabManager - CannotAccessNetwork error deploying VM

Posted Wed, 02/29/2012 - 09:25 by MWalker

In a VMware LabManager environment with ~10 VMs and several networks, I encountered an issue where two would not deploy. The error seen on both was:

Unable to deploy virtual machines in resource pool "RESOURCEPOOLNAME".

  * DRS failed to find hosts to deploy the virtual machines on the resource pool "resgroup-149".

Nagios - Switch Interface Traffic

Posted Fri, 12/09/2011 - 17:03 by MWalker

I recently wanted to start monitoring some ports on my switch stack. Specifically several uplink ports and several trunk ports. Doing a little research I found the best plugin was the "check_iftraffic3" plugin available from the Nagios Plugin Exchange. Ref: http://exchange.nagios.org/directory/Plugins/Network-Connections%2C-Stats-and-Bandwidth/check_iftraffic3/details

How To - Linux Server Performance

Posted Fri, 12/09/2011 - 09:54 by MWalker

It is important to have a basic understanding of how to check out your Linux server's performance to help diagnose / troubleshoot various issues. Below is some useful tools and reference materials I have found helpful.