Category Archives: Housing

VMware ESX and SAN storage

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Is it just me or can 2 ESX 3.5 boxes not have access to the same SAN LUN without VirtualCenter controlling things?

So far, I’m having fun with the SAN, ESX hosts and converting VMware Virtual Server VMs to ESX VMs with VMware Converter. And lots of misc tasks that slipped to the bottom of the list for far too long.

Server Consolidation on a Shoestring

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As part of the application/interview process with Housing, I was asked to give a 15 min presentation on a significant project I had been involved with, preferably one I had lead, including timeline, technical skills and lessons learned. I chose to talk about my experiences virtualizing hosts at Hoopeston Area Schools. Little did I know just how similar Housing was to where Jim and I were.
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Silly, Silly vendors

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Your DNS May Be EOL

So, I’ve gotten 2 separate notes from 2 separate vendors over the last couple of days proclaiming similar things. Recently, ISC has declared several older versions of BIND “End of Life“. These older versions are no longer supported and may or may not have security issues. But, if your boss gets one of these, you can be sure that he/she will forward it on to the technical people out on the pointy end of the stick to answer for. I hope you don’t even have to think twice, you shouldn’t be running this stuff anymore.

Windows Server 2003 and Exchange 2000

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It’s not my job anymore, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to comment on KC’s post about Exchange 2000 and Windows Server 2003.

In the year or so after we made that decision, I had countless discussions with customers who thought we made the decision for fiscal reasons, we were just trying to squeeze more money out of our customers, etc etc… let’s just say that it’s really frustrating to have your customers think you’re evil. 🙂

I’ll count myself as one of those customers, though I never got a chance to comment directly to KC or anyone else at Microsoft. But, it’s good to know that MS isn’t always just a looking for another way to make a quick buck or using forced obsolescence. Also, I can only imagine what happens when someone two or three levels above you tells someone else two or three levels above them that you said it can’t be done.

Windows Server 2003 SP1 firewall

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Who would have thought I’d be talking about the Windows Server 2003 SP1 firewall? But, it really works. And it’s almost tolerable to configure from the command line.

REM Set variables:
set Network1=192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0,192.168.10.128/255.255.255.224
set Network2=172.16.0.0/255.255.0.0
set Network3=10.12.0.0/255.255.254.0
REM Concatenate addresses here, MUST HAVE ONLY COMMAS (",") between them
set ADDRESSES=%Network1%,%Network2%,%Network3%
REM Allow MSSQL from All
netsh firewall add portopening protocol = TCP port = 1433 name = MSSQL mode = ENABLE scope = CUSTOM addresses = %ADDRESSES%
REM Allow RDP from Network1 only
netsh firewall add portopening protocol = TCP port = 3389 name = RemoteDesktop mode = ENABLE scope = CUSTOM addresses = %Network1%
REM Allow BackupExec from Local Subnet only
netsh firewall add portopening protocol = TCP port = 10000 name = BackupExecAgent mode = ENABLE scope = SUBNET
REM Turn on logging of dropped packets
netsh firewall set logging filelocation = %windir%pfirewall.log maxfilesize = 4096 droppedpackets = ENABLE
REM Clear variables:
set Network1=
set Network2=
set Network3=

The logfile generates too much useless information, especially if you use DHCP on your network, but it also shows that you didn’t waste your time configuring it:

2006-08-11 05:36:28 DROP TCP 67.108.111.43 192.168.1.130 27726 1433 48 S 3572543340 0 65535 - - - RECEIVE