So today, just as I was getting ready to leave work, my employer's remote office in Louisville Ky went down.
Once upon a time, I thrived on the outages like that. But times change, and I no longer work in NOCs (Network Operation Center). The last NOC I worked burnt me out on computers. I moved from NOCs to the corporate side of things. Its different with its own stress.
One thing that surprised me, from 10 years ago when I was doing the NOC thing, is that now a T1 can be down for 4 hours. Back in the day, even a fractional T1 would get you a call from the vendor in under an hour.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
it's been a while
I'd love to say I have been spending the last month playing with my great new CCNA lab, but I haven't been. It's sitting on a chair in my front room right now. I have almost everything I need. All I have to get is a rack, a shelf, a pdu (perfer a switched pdu), and a PC to rule it all (which is sitting half a part on my kitchen table and floor, changing cases).
However, due to projects at work, I'm back to studying Xen. The last book I had sucked. In fact it sucked so bad that all the errata I submitted has yet to show up. I will not be wasting my time with that book anymore, and probably will just toss it into the recycle bin the next time I find it.
I recently purchased Running Xen: A Hands-On Guide to the Art of Virtualization. It's really good. I mean really really good. I did have some problem with the Xen 3.0.3-0 LiveCD, but that's not the book's fault. I am also seriously telling everyone I know in computers to buy this book.
Other things I have worked on...
Well once again, I remind everyone in the department why you want physical security on the servers, not just software. I've had 5 boxes, from a company the people I work for bought out, that had to have data or other things accessed. 4 of the 5 went down easy with TRK. We just reset the administrator password, that's right I get paid to crack boxes. The last one we had to do a little different. We really needed the data off of it, and it turns out that KDE based linux distros (at least the 2 we tried) don't handle ntfs mounts very well maybe it's just something in the debian tree, I'll have to check more later. However Fedora 8 (gnome desktop)got the data no problem did. Even if it is taking all day to copy the data over to our usb drive (probably could have done a network drop faster but I was teaching the windows admin how to use the stuff, and he went with the usb drive).
I recently got to build out a system to move the large amounts of data we get from customers to our network in what we hope will be a faster way. Get the drive, take it out of it's usb case, put it into a removable SATA tray and copy it up to the share at gb speeds (after they get the line ran next week, so for now it will be 100mb speed). It's been a pain in my but to get the system up, problems with the Nix distros I wanted to install, bios updates, things breaking when I install the drivers. It went from being a Linux box, to a Win2k3 to an XP-64bit box. I'm hoping XP will work since intel's excuse is it's meant to be a desktop box. It has to be up and running by morning though, which is why I'm still at work at almost 22:30 edt.
Today I also got to design an 8TB storage system. I'm hoping it will work, I'll find out in a week or so when the hardware comes in. 8 sata drives, 1 ide drive (os), lots of memory and FreeNAS
However, due to projects at work, I'm back to studying Xen. The last book I had sucked. In fact it sucked so bad that all the errata I submitted has yet to show up. I will not be wasting my time with that book anymore, and probably will just toss it into the recycle bin the next time I find it.
I recently purchased Running Xen: A Hands-On Guide to the Art of Virtualization. It's really good. I mean really really good. I did have some problem with the Xen 3.0.3-0 LiveCD, but that's not the book's fault. I am also seriously telling everyone I know in computers to buy this book.
Other things I have worked on...
Well once again, I remind everyone in the department why you want physical security on the servers, not just software. I've had 5 boxes, from a company the people I work for bought out, that had to have data or other things accessed. 4 of the 5 went down easy with TRK. We just reset the administrator password, that's right I get paid to crack boxes. The last one we had to do a little different. We really needed the data off of it, and it turns out that KDE based linux distros (at least the 2 we tried) don't handle ntfs mounts very well maybe it's just something in the debian tree, I'll have to check more later. However Fedora 8 (gnome desktop)got the data no problem did. Even if it is taking all day to copy the data over to our usb drive (probably could have done a network drop faster but I was teaching the windows admin how to use the stuff, and he went with the usb drive).
I recently got to build out a system to move the large amounts of data we get from customers to our network in what we hope will be a faster way. Get the drive, take it out of it's usb case, put it into a removable SATA tray and copy it up to the share at gb speeds (after they get the line ran next week, so for now it will be 100mb speed). It's been a pain in my but to get the system up, problems with the Nix distros I wanted to install, bios updates, things breaking when I install the drivers. It went from being a Linux box, to a Win2k3 to an XP-64bit box. I'm hoping XP will work since intel's excuse is it's meant to be a desktop box. It has to be up and running by morning though, which is why I'm still at work at almost 22:30 edt.
Today I also got to design an 8TB storage system. I'm hoping it will work, I'll find out in a week or so when the hardware comes in. 8 sata drives, 1 ide drive (os), lots of memory and FreeNAS
Friday, April 25, 2008
The total so far
203.79
2 cisco 2501
2 cisco 1924
1 cisco 2507
1 cisco 2924
mounting brackets for all of them. AND I scored a freebie.
Free Rack. Don't know about that though, I don't know if it will be free standing, or if it will be short enough to fit in the space I need it to.
2 cisco 2501
2 cisco 1924
1 cisco 2507
1 cisco 2924
mounting brackets for all of them. AND I scored a freebie.
Free Rack. Don't know about that though, I don't know if it will be free standing, or if it will be short enough to fit in the space I need it to.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
really cheap
What I have bought so far for my lab:
2 switches for less than $37.00
2 routers for less than $45.00
Everything else I'm bidding on, but waiting until last day bids to do get them.
So far:
1 router (which will finish my collection for the lab, until CCNP time) looking at less than $30.00
Still need one more switch, cables for everything (power, cat5, serial to serial for the routers), a network rack (going to be the most expensive part), a switched PDU, and mounting brackets.
The really neat part. Looking at pre-built kits on ebay, they want between 400 to 500 for them, I'm building mine piece by piece, including a rack, for less.
2 switches for less than $37.00
2 routers for less than $45.00
Everything else I'm bidding on, but waiting until last day bids to do get them.
So far:
1 router (which will finish my collection for the lab, until CCNP time) looking at less than $30.00
Still need one more switch, cables for everything (power, cat5, serial to serial for the routers), a network rack (going to be the most expensive part), a switched PDU, and mounting brackets.
The really neat part. Looking at pre-built kits on ebay, they want between 400 to 500 for them, I'm building mine piece by piece, including a rack, for less.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Detroit vs Colorado
So back to the hockey brackets from the other day. I hinted at how it works in hockey, but I never really said how it worked.
In the hockey play off system, the highest rank team plays the lowest rank team. So round one looks like this:
1v8, 2v7, 3v6, 4v5
In round 2, they play again highest vs lowest, out of the remaining teams. This year it looks like this:
1v6, and 2v5.
Round 3: the winners of those two match-ups. Then it's off to the finals where the West beat, I mean meets, the East.
Games start tomorrow.
In the hockey play off system, the highest rank team plays the lowest rank team. So round one looks like this:
1v8, 2v7, 3v6, 4v5
In round 2, they play again highest vs lowest, out of the remaining teams. This year it looks like this:
1v6, and 2v5.
Round 3: the winners of those two match-ups. Then it's off to the finals where the West beat, I mean meets, the East.
Games start tomorrow.
nice and cheap
So I've been thinking about putting a cisco lab together. For CCNA training. Since today was slow at work I spent a large part of the day looking at parts and pricing it out.
The places I was looking had really, really good deals. I'm going to be getting at least 2 switches tomorrow. I'll also have to order a serial port adapter for my laptop. But that won't be that big of a deal.
The places I was looking had really, really good deals. I'm going to be getting at least 2 switches tomorrow. I'll also have to order a serial port adapter for my laptop. But that won't be that big of a deal.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Hockey playoff brackets
Small nit-pic, but I need to rant.
So Detroit won the first round against Nashville today... Finally. So the question came up who does Detroit play next. The answer wasn't on NHL.com it wasn't elsewhere either. The person I was with said look up 2008 hockey brackets on the net and see. So I did...
AND THEY WERE ALL WRONG!!!
Before I did, looking at the standings I said it will be either Colorado or Calgary. Because those are the lowest 2 teams still in round one. Colorado already won their match-up, so it's just a question of who wins Calgary vs San Jose. (The ticker below T.V talking heads about 5 minutes later said the same thing).
But the brackets on the net were not set up that way. Just pathetic. If you don't know how to do the brackets for the sport, Then maybe you shouldn't try to fake it and get it wrong.
So Detroit won the first round against Nashville today... Finally. So the question came up who does Detroit play next. The answer wasn't on NHL.com it wasn't elsewhere either. The person I was with said look up 2008 hockey brackets on the net and see. So I did...
AND THEY WERE ALL WRONG!!!
Before I did, looking at the standings I said it will be either Colorado or Calgary. Because those are the lowest 2 teams still in round one. Colorado already won their match-up, so it's just a question of who wins Calgary vs San Jose. (The ticker below T.V talking heads about 5 minutes later said the same thing).
But the brackets on the net were not set up that way. Just pathetic. If you don't know how to do the brackets for the sport, Then maybe you shouldn't try to fake it and get it wrong.
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