scandals of an ITian

Got some spare US$90,000 ?

Well then you could probably get the new Cisco CRS-3 Carrier Routing System (CRS) to deliver the next generation of Internet to your favored device.

322 TB/sec …. yep u can say it ……………. Ouch!!!!

Read more about him here at Geekzone:

Cisco introduces 322Tbps Cisco CRS-3 Carrier Routing System.

After the decommission of  our IBM X345 and IBM X346 servers, I started looking at how to make use of them.

Reasons being that they are 32bit servers with heaps of space but the constraints of 3 GB RAM.

After reading the bible on getting ESXi and Openfiler talking, decided to turn those babies into Openfiler NAS devices. Follow the bible and your sweet.

Now thats all good but I need to monitor everything and anything that runs in my environment and one of my favourite would be the poor mans monitoring system Cacti. I use other monitoring systems as well but love Cacti for the visual and graphical approach to monitoring. But thats for another post.

So to Config SNMP on Openfiler do the following:-

1. Get WinSCP. Awesome tool to transfer files between your Windows Box and Linux boxes. Basically you would need SSH enabled on the linux Box

2. Use WinSCP to connect to your Openfiler Box

3. On the Openfiler Side of WinSCP browse to the folder /etc/snmp and right click and press copy on the snmp.conf file.

4. Open your My Documents or the location that you copied the snmp.conf file to.

5. Use your favorite notepad editor, for me notepad++ does the job , to open the file and create a COPY FIRST so that if we do muck up we always have the original.

6. Type the following into the file at the very end

rocommunity public
com2sec local localhost {IP address of the monitoring server}
com2sec network_l {Network address allowed to access the server}/24
group MyROGroup_1 v2c local
group MyROGroup_1 v2c network_1
view all-mibs included .1 80
access MyROGroup_1 .. v1 noauth exact all-mibs none none
access MyROGroup_2 .. v2c noauth exact all-mibs none none

7. Either use putty or WinSCP to restart the SNMP service on OpenFiler by running the following command:

service snmpd restart

8. Go back to your monitoring software and start monitoring your Openfiler Appliance.

Some of the graphs that I have just started generating

Yep thats right TechNet looks like it got an overall and a new paint job. I do miss the old grey TechNet that I had always known but things look a bit more organized and easy to find. Browsing and navigations looks slightly different and easier.

I would have preferred to have that “AD”  box at the footer than right at the top … oh well thats my personal opinion.

TechNet anyways rockz and it is one of the best place on the web to find resources and articles on any Microsoft Products.

Wanna hang out at TechNet? Check him out here

Microsoft TechNet: Resources for IT Professionals.

Office 2010 TechNet page is available here http://3.ly/7Vmp and System Center TechCenter page is available here http://3.ly/adA7

Get em cracking !!

I use a couple of stats plugins on WordPress to give me a basic idea on whats happening.

WordPress Plugins that I use are Kstats and Woopra

Woopra is pretty cool because it comes with a Web GUI , Desktop App and also stats from your WordPress Dashboard

Check out Woopra here .

Of course you can and I do recommend the use of Google Analytics and some of the stats from the blog are posted below:

Just wanna say thank you so much for all your support. I know its a small step but I hope to bring more useful content and user experience as I grow older and wiser to bring you such experience.

Cheers

Aben Samuel

05/03/2010

Been thinking about writing a blog post about this for a while but found the same article here

Microsoft Forefront TMG – Best Practice Analyzer.

and here Forefront TMG (ISA Server) Product Team Blog Post

Whenever I make some significant changes to the TMG on our Essential Business Server at work , I run this to get a good overview of anything that I have missed.

Pretty good tool for Sys Admins to keep an eye on network resources. Has email notifications thrown into the free bundle.

Read more about it 4sysops – FREE: EMCO Ping Monitor Free.

An awesome blog post on SCCM Dashboard by one of my favorite tweeters that I follow @richfrombechtle .

System Center, in particular Config Manager aka SCCM, is becoming more and more popular with customers and clients at work. People looking to start enhancing and automating tasks such as OS deployment, app distribution, patch management etc as well as those who’ve started down this path, often with Altiris, and are now looking for a more rounded solution, are all asking for/happy to listen to information about SCCM. There’s more info on SCCM as a product here but in this post I specifically want to talk about the Dashboard continued here

Direct Link Available here

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) Dashboard « Software Ruminations.

Found this floating around and thought it might be quite useful to be printed.

I have checked it out and its legit and contains all the articles freely available on TechNet but in a PDF format with the same format of index as found on TechNet.

Enjoy. It is available here  http://3.ly/vram

Stats for the download available here http://3.ly/vram-/

Yay the book that I have been waiting has finally come out and even though its got a listed price of $59.99 its on Amazon for a sweet price of $37.79 shipped. If you have a kindle there is one available as well.

• Plan and migrate from Windows Server 2003/2008 to Windows Server 2008 R2 and use R2’s new server migration tools
• Manage Active Directory with Active Directory Administrative Center, Best Practice Analyzer, and PowerShell scripts
• Use R2’s updated security tools and templates to lock down servers, clients, and networks
• Maximize availability with Windows Server 2008 R2 clustering, fault tolerance, and replication
• Streamline client management with new Group Policy ADMX settings and management tools
• Improve remote access using DirectAccess, Remote Desktop Services (formerly Terminal Services), and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
• Implement Hyper-V virtualization including the built-in Live Migration technology
• Leverage add-ons such as Windows SharePoint Services, Windows Media Services, and IIS 7.5

Original Article Available here

Windows 2008 R2 Unleashed.

An in depth look into Telecom NZ exchange with heaps of photos of fiber, DSlams and ADSL equipment and heaps more.

Check it out here

Steve Zone:.